It is a commonplace among moralists that you cannot get happiness by pursuing it. This is only true if you pursue it unwisely. Gamblers at Monte Carlo are pursuing money, and most of them lose it instead, but there are other ways of pursuing money which often succeed. So it is with happiness. If you pursue it by means of drink, you are forgetting the hang-over. Epicurus pursued it by living only in congenial society and eating only dry bread, supplemented by a little cheese on feast days. His method proved successful in his case, but he was avaletudinarian(体弱多病的人), and most people would need something more vigorous. For most people, the pursuit of happiness, unless supplemented in various ways, is too abstract and theoretical to be adequate as a personal rule of life. But I think that whatever personal rule of life you may choose it should not, except in rare and heroic cases, be incompatible with happiness.
There are a great many people who have all the material conditions of happiness, i.e. health and a sufficient income, and who, nevertheless, are profoundly unhappy. In such cases it would seem as if the fault must lie with a wrong theory as to how to live. In one sense, we may say that any theory as to how to live is wrong. We imagine ourselves more different from the animals than we are. Animals live on impulse, and are happy as long as external conditions are favorable. If you have a cat it will enjoy life if it has food and warmth and opportunities for an occasional night on the tiles. Your needs are more complex than those of your cat, but they still have their basis in instinct. In civilized societies, especially in English-speaking societies, this is too apt to be forgotten. People propose to themselves some oneparamount(最重要的)objective, andrestrain(抑制,控制)all impulses that do not minister to it. A businessman may be so anxious to grow rich that to this end he sacrifices health and private affections. When at last he has become rich, no pleasure remains to him except harrying other people by exhortations to imitate his noble example. Many rich ladies, although nature has not endowed them with any spontaneous pleasure in literature or art, decide to be thought cultured, and spend boring hours learning the right thing to say about fashionable new books that are written to give delight, not to afford opportunities for dustysnobbism(势利).
If you look around at the men and women whom you can call happy, you will see that they all have certain things in common. The most important of these things is an activity which at most gradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming into existence. Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family. Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way if their own work seems good to them. But there are many humbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spend their working life in the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremunerated toil in their gardens, and when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.
The whole subject of happiness has, in my opinion, been treated too solemnly. It had been thought that man cannot be happy without a theory of life or a religion. Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy by a bad theory may need a better theory to help them to recovery, just as you may need atonic(声调的)when you have been ill. But when things are normal a man should be healthy without a tonic and happy without a theory. It is the simple things that really matter. If a man delights in his wife and children, has success in work, and finds pleasure in the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, he will be happy whatever his philosophy may be. If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, his children's noise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime he longs for night, and at night sighs for the light of day, then what he needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen----a different diet, or more exercise, or what not.
Man is an animal, and his happiness depends on his physiology more than he likes to think. This is a humble conclusion, but I cannot make myself disbelieve it. Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day thanby any conceivable(可能的)change of philosophy.
雅思写作参考范文:使用电脑是否会使传统写信技能消失
雅思写作参考范文:有钱才是成功?
淡化雅思文章模板痕迹:双边结构写作
如何使你的雅思作文突破高分?
雅思写作提纲:动物实验
正确认识词汇量 夯实雅思写作的基础
雅思写作提纲:电脑替代老师?
雅思写作低分的6大原因
雅思写作参考范文:警察带枪?
雅思G类写作讲解及范文:Enquiry类
雅思G类写作讲解及范文:Complain类
4月雅思写作总结及5月预测
雅思写作:各种“衰退”词汇的大集合
雅思大作文开头段经典套句
雅思大作文主体段写作方法
雅思写作素材:老龄人口增加对社会的影响
雅思写作常见语法错误解析
雅思写作:4方面提升雅思作文质量
雅思小作文中间段经典模板句
雅思名师写作范文:志愿者服务
20分钟轻松搞定雅思小作文
雅思小作文流程图常用词汇
雅思写作:雅思大作文开头段经典套句
雅思写作忘词时的3种换词方法
雅思写作:增强语句表现力的5个方法
雅思写作:简单四步把握G类书信语气
雅思写作参考范文:限制飞机?
雅思作文高分的7大原则
雅思写作:扩展主体段的3种方法
淡化雅思文章模板痕迹:单边结构写作
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |