人，其实是有惰性的。
不是每个人都会有很多的好奇心，也不是每个人都会有那么多的思考。
在我们的生活中有许多司空见惯的事和物轻飘飘地从眼前掠过，随风而逝。但对于罗素这样的哲人来说，生活中的许多小细节，比如快乐、悲哀、幸福、悲惨、烦恼、兴奋等等等等，这一切都会令他思考，并结合自己和他人的生活一点点总结和提炼，给予我们一些有价值的东西。
我并不盲目推崇他，认为他所说的一起都是对的，但无论如何，他所告诉我们的，会引发我们自己的思考，让我们活得明白；或者会给我们启发，令我们活得幸福。
无论如何，我相信阅读是好的，思考是好的！
Chapter 4: Boredom and excitement
第四章 厌倦与兴奋
Boredom as a factor in human behaviour has received, in my opinion, far less attention than it deserves. It has been, I believe, one of the great motive powers throughout the historical epoch, and is so at the present day more than ever. Boredom would seem to be a distinctively human emotion. Animals in captivity, it is true, become listless, pace up and down, and yawn, but in a state of nature I do not believe that they experience anything analogous to boredom. Most of the time they are on the look-out for enemies, or food, or both; sometimes they are mating, sometimes they are trying to keep warm. But even when they are unhappy, I do not think that they are bored. Possibly anthropoid apes may resemble us in this respect, as in so many others, but having never lived with them I have not had the opportunity to make the experiment. One of the essentials of boredom consists in the contrast between present circumstances and some other more agreeable circumstances which force themselves irresistibly upon the imagination. It is also one of the essentials of boredom that one's faculties must not be fully occupied. Running away from enemies who are trying to take one's life is, I imagine, unpleasant, but certainly not boring. A man would not feel bored while he was being executed, unless he had almost superhuman courage. In like manner no one has ever yawned during his maiden speech in the House of Lords, with the exception of the late Duke of Devonshire, who was reverenced by their Lordships in consequence. Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement.
在我看来，厌倦作为大家认可的人类行为的一个表现因素，还远远没有得到应有的重视。我相信，在整个历史时期，它都曾是一个巨大的驱动力，而比之以往，这一点在当今时代则更为重要。
厌倦看起来似乎是人类特有的一种情绪——被关起来的动物的确会变得无精打采，会走来走去，还打着哈欠，但是如果是自然状态的动物，我不觉得它们也会有任何类似于厌倦的经历。大部分时间里它们在关注着敌人、惦记着食物，或者两样都有。有时候它们在交配，有时候则尝试着取暖。但是，即使在动物不开心的时候，我也不觉得它们是厌倦的。或许类人猿就像在许多其它方面一样，在这方面跟我们有点像，但我从没跟它们一起生活过，也没机会做个实验。
厌倦的要素之一在于，拿目前的状况跟其它更让人开心的、让人忍不住想像的情形来对比。厌烦的另一个要素是，人的才能是无法完全发挥的。
我想，从想要夺走自己性命的敌人那逃开肯定是不愉快的，但这种情绪绝不是厌倦。除非是拥有超人般的勇气，一个就要被执行死刑的人也是不会感到厌倦的。同样，除了因此而赢得贵族们尊敬的德文郡公爵以外，没有人会在议会上院的初次演讲中哈欠连天。
从本质上说，厌倦是因某些事而受挫的欲望，这些事不见得是令人快乐的，只要能让这厌倦情绪的受害者知道一天不同于另一天就好。
说到底，与厌倦相对的，不是快乐，而是兴奋刺激。
The desire for excitement is very deep-seated in human beings, especially in males. I suppose that in the hunting stage it was more easily gratified than it has been since. The chase was exciting, war was exciting, courtship was exciting. A savage will manage to commit adultery with a woman while her husband is asleep beside her, knowing that it is instant death if the husband wakes. This situation, I imagine, is not boring.
追求兴奋刺激的欲望深深地扎根在人们，特别是男人的心中。
我想，在狩猎时代这种欲望比之之后的时代更容易得到满足。追逐野兽是令人兴奋，战争是令人兴奋的，求爱也是令人兴奋的——哪怕他清楚知道一旦她丈夫醒来自己马上就死路一条，一个野蛮人也会想方设法地与一个女人欢好，而不管丈夫就躺在她的身旁。在这种情况下，我想，他必定不会有厌倦的情绪。
But with the coming of agriculture life began to grow dull, except, of course, for the aristocrats, who remained, and still remain, in the hunting stage. We hear a great deal about the tedium of machine-minding, but I think the tedium of agriculture by old-fashioned methods is at least as great. Indeed, contrary to what most philanthropists maintain, I should say that the machine age has enormously diminished the sum of boredom in the world. Among wage-earners the working hours are not solitary, while the evening hours can be given over to a variety of amusements that were impossible in an old-fashioned country village. Consider again the change in lower middle-class life. In old days, after supper, when the wife and daughters had cleared away the things, everybody sat round and had what was called “a happy family time”. This meant that paterfamilias went to sleep, his wife knitted, and the daughters wished they were dead or at Timbuktu. They were not allowed to read, or to leave the room, because the theory was that at that period their father conversed with them, which must be a pleasure to all concerned. With luck they ultimately married and had a chance to inflict upon their children a youth as dismal as their own had been. If they did not have luck, they developed into old maids, perhaps ultimately into decayed gentlewomen—a fate as horrible as any that savages have bestowed upon their victims.
但是，随着农耕时代的到来，生活开始变得死气沉沉，枯燥无味，当然，贵族是个例外，他们还处在、并一直处在狩猎时代。
我们听说过许多关于机械劳作单调乏味的抱怨，但是我想，使用老旧的方法进行农耕时那种单调乏味至少一样的伟大。
实际上，跟大多数慈善家的想法相反，我想说，机器时代的到来极大地减少了这世上厌倦的总量。
对于工薪族来说，工作时间里不会是孤独的，而在晚上则有各种各样的娱乐消遣，这在老式的乡村里是不可能的。
再看看下层中产阶级的生活吧。在过去，晚饭过后，当妻子和女儿已经收拾停当，大伙就会坐成一圈，享受“幸福的家庭时光”。这意味着一家之长昏昏欲睡，妻子在忙乎着编织，而女儿们则心中腹诽，梦想着自己已经死了或者离开这里，到了神秘遥远的马里古城廷巴克图。在这个时候，她们不能读书，也不能离开屋子，这是因为从理论上说，那是父亲跟她们谈话的时间，而这对所有人都必须是一件快乐的事情。最后，要是幸运的话，她们会结婚，然后有机会去折腾自己的孩子，让他们也度过一个像自己曾经经历过的一样沉闷的青春年华。要是运气不够好，她们会变成老处女，也许最后变成一个衰朽的老妇人——这种命运就如同野蛮人强加于牺牲者身上的迫害一样，同样地可怕。
All this weight of boredom should be borne in mind in estimating the world of a hundred years ago, and when one goes further into the past the boredom becomes still worse. Imagine the monotony of winter in a mediaeval village. People could not read or write, they had only candles to give them light after dark, the smoke of their one fire filled the only room that was not bitterly cold. Roads were practically impassable, so that one hardly ever saw anybody from another village. It must have been boredom as much as anything that led to the practice of witch-hunts as the sole sport by which winter evenings could be enlivened.
当我们评估百年前这个世界的时候，我们会感受到人们内心所承受的、厌倦所带给人们的重负；而我们越是往前追溯，人们所承受的厌倦也越是沉重。
试想一下一个中世纪村庄的冬天那单调而千篇一律的生活吧：人们还不会读书写字；当黑暗来临时他们只有蜡烛能带给他们微弱的光明；唯一一间不至于冰冷刺骨的屋子里弥漫着柴火的烟雾。屋外的道路几乎无法通行，也几乎看不到其它村子来的人。一定是无尽的厌倦导致了人们唯一的运动，也就是搜捕女巫的习俗。或许，有了这个习俗，人们冬天的夜晚会多了点生气吧。
We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement.
比之我们的祖先，我们更少厌倦，但却更怕厌倦。但我们慢慢知道，或者不如说是相信，厌倦并不是与生俱来，通过对兴奋刺激充分而有力的追求，我们可以避免厌倦的侵袭。
Girls nowadays earn their own living, very largely because this enables them to seek excitement in the evening and to escape “the happy family time” that their grandmothers had to endure. Everybody who can lives in a town; in America, those who cannot, have a car, or at the least a motor-bicycle, to take them to the movies. And of course they have the radio in their houses. Young men and young women meet each other with much less difficulty than was formerly the case, and every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.
如今，女孩们开始自己谋生，而这很大程度上就是因为这可以让她们获得自由，可以在晚上寻求兴奋刺激，并且可以逃避她们的祖母们不得不忍受的“欢乐家庭时光”。
在美国，现在人人都可以生活在城里，而那些不能住在城里的人也拥有一辆汽车，或者至少有辆摩托车，可以乘坐去看电影。当然，家家户户也都有了收音机。比起之前的例子，年轻男女们约会也不再像以往那么难；家庭女佣们则期望每周能有一次令人兴奋的时刻，而这足以令简·奥斯汀小说的女主角在整本小说里漫长地期待了。
As we rise in the social scale the pursuit of excitement becomes more and more intense. Those who can afford it are perpetually moving from place to place, carrying with them as they go gaiety, dancing and drinking, but for some reason always expecting to enjoy these more in a new place. Those who have to earn a living get their share of boredom, of necessity, in working hours, but those who have enough money to be freed from the need of work have as their ideal a life completely freed from boredom. It is a noble ideal, and far be it from me to decry it, but I am afraid that like other ideals it is more difficult to achievement than the idealists suppose. After all, the mornings are boring in proportion as the previous evenings were amusing. There will be middle age, possibly even old age. At twenty men think that life will be over at thirty.
随着我们社会地位的提高，我们对于兴奋刺激的追求也愈加强烈。
那些能够承担得起的人总是不停地从一个地方到另一个地方寻欢作乐，纵情跳舞，开怀畅饮，但因为某些原因，他们总是期望在新的地方享受更多。
那些必须赚钱谋生的人必然会在工作时感到厌倦，但那些有足够的钱，无须努力工作的人则梦想着完全摆脱厌倦的理想生活。这是一种贵族的的理想，我绝没有诋毁之意，但恐怕这就像其它理想一样，比之理想主义者的梦想更难于实现。毕竟，比之之前令人愉悦的晚上，令人厌烦的早晨总是占一定比例的。人会有中年甚至老年，而在20岁的年轻人想来，人生在30岁时候就结束了。
I, at the age of fifty-eight, can no longer take that view. Perhaps it is as unwise to spend one's vital capital as one's financial capital. Perhaps some element of boredom is a necessary ingredient in life. A wish to escape from boredom is natural; indeed, all races of mankind have displayed it as opportunity occurred. When savages have first tasted liquor at the hands of the white men, they have found at last an escape from age-old tedium, and, except when the Government has interfered, they have drunk themselves into a riotous death. Wars, pogroms, and persecutions have all been part of the flight from boredom; even quarrels with neighbours have been found better than nothing. Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
我，已经58岁了，也不可能再持这种观点。我想，也许这就像把自己的棺材本拿出来当做某人的金融资本一样傻；也许一定的厌倦其实是我们生命中必不可少的一部分。
想要摆脱厌倦是很自然的事，事实上，只要有机会，人类所有种族都会表露出这一愿望。
当野蛮人第一次从白人那里品尝到酒精的滋味，他们至少发现了一个逃脱长久以来的单调乏味的方法。因此，除非政府干涉，否则他们就会纵酒狂欢，至死方休。
战争、屠杀以及迫害都是人们逃离厌倦的行为之一，甚至与邻居的争吵也是摆脱厌倦的一种行为。所以，对于卫道士或道德家们来说，厌倦是一个致命的难题，而人类至少一半的罪恶与人们对于厌倦的恐惧相关。
Boredom, however, is not to be regarded as wholly evil. There are two sorts, of which one is fructifying, while the other is stultifying. The fructifying kind arises from the absence of drugs, and the stultifying kind from the absence of vital activities. I am not prepared to say that drugs can play no good part in life whatsoever. There are moments, for example, when an opiate will be prescribed by a wise physician, and I think these moments more frequent than prohibitionists suppose. But the craving for drugs is certainly something which cannot be left to the unfettered operation of natural impulse. And the kind of boredom which the person accustomed to drugs experiences when deprived of them is something for which I can suggest no remedy except time.
不管怎么说，厌倦并不被视为绝对的罪恶。厌倦有两种类型，其中一种是富有成效的，而另一种则是毫无成效的。对于富有成效的这一类来说，厌倦来自于缺乏麻醉；而对于毫无成效的这一类，则是因为缺乏有活力的活动。
我并不准备说药物在生活中没有任何作用，比如，某些明智的医生会视情况指定病人使用鸦片制剂，而这种情形比那些禁毒者想象的要更加频繁。但是，我们决不能放纵人的本能欲望，毫无限制地满足人对于毒品的欲望。至于那些习惯了毒品的人们所感受的厌倦，我只能说，唯有时间才是 治愈的良方。
Now what applies to drugs applies also, within limits, to every kind of excitement. A life too full of excitement is an exhausting life, in which continually stronger stimuli are needed to give the thrill that has come to be thought an essential part of pleasure. A person accustomed to too much excitement is like a person with a morbid craving for pepper, who comes last to be unable even to taste a quantity of pepper which would cause anyone else to choke. There is an element of boredom which is inseparable from the avoidance of too much excitement, and too much excitement not only undermines the health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty. I not want to push to extremes the objection to excitement. A certain amount of it is wholesome, but, like almost everything else, the matter is quantitative. Too little may produce morbid cravings, too much will produce exhaustion. A certain power of enduring boredom is therefore essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young.
在一定限度里，用来解决吸毒问题的方法也适用于对付各种刺激。
充满刺激的生活会耗尽人的精力，在这种生活中，人们需要连续不断的、强烈的刺激，才能够获得颤栗的狂喜，而这种颤栗被认为是快乐的基本因素。
一个习惯于过度刺激的人就像一个有胡椒癖的人，足以令别人窒息的胡椒，他甚至无法品尝出胡椒的味道。
想要避免过度刺激，那么，有那么一点厌倦是不可避免的。而过度的刺激不仅仅损害健康，还会令人对各种快乐和趣味变得迟钝，令刺激取代了意义深远的、身体器官本能的满足，令小聪明取代了智慧，惊讶取代了真正的美丽。
我并不是无限制地反对刺激，一定量的刺激是有益身心的，但是，像其它所有事情一样，关键是这个“度”的问题。数量太少会引发病态的欲望，数量太多则会令人精疲力竭。因此，在一定程度上忍受厌倦是幸福生活的必要因素，同时，这也是应该教给年轻人的东西之一。
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