悠游度过一天的24小时：第一章 每日奇迹

CHAPTER I The Daily Miracle

第一章 每日奇迹

"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent f lat—half empty! Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New suit—old hat! Magnificent necktie—baggy trousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass—bad mutton, or Turkish coffee—cracked cup! He can't understand it. Explanation simply is that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it! I'd show him—” “对，他就是那种不知怎样妥善安排的人。条件优越，收入稳定，完全够买各种必需品和奢侈品，不过也不是那么奢华。但这家伙却经常陷入窘境，不知为何花钱买不到什么。上好的寓所——空了一半！看起来似乎总有中介光顾。新套装——配顶旧帽子！漂亮的领带——配条宽松下垂的灯笼裤！邀你进餐：用雕花玻璃碗——装糟羊肉或土耳其咖啡——杯子是裂的！他搞不明白为什么。原因很简单，他的收入花得都不是地方。要是我有他一半的收入就好了！我会教他——” So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our superior way. We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride of the moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to live on suchand-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ, a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country on £85 a year. I have seen an essay, How to Live on Eight Shillings a Week."" But I have never seen an essay, ""How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day."" Yet it has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money—usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has."

我们大多数人时不时地、不无优越地批评别人。我们几乎都是财政大臣，那不过是一时的骄傲罢了。报纸上充斥着教人如何靠一定量的钱过日子的文章，这些文章引起的反响特别热烈，人们对这个问题的兴趣可见一斑。最近，某日报谈论的话题为一个女人是否一年只需85英镑就能在这个国家过得舒适，由此引发了激烈论战。我曾见过一篇文章，名为《如何靠8先令过一星期》，但我还从没见过名为《怎样度过一天24小时》的文章。然而，早就有人说过时间就是金钱。该谚语低估了时间的重要性，时间比金钱宝贵得多。如果你有时间，你就会有金钱——通常如此。然而，即使你和卡尔顿饭店寄存间的服务员一样富有，你也不能用金钱换来比我或火炉边的猫多哪怕一分钟的时间。

Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. It is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself!

哲学家阐释了空间，但没有阐明过时间。时间是万物难以言喻的原材料。拥有时间，一切皆有可能；没有时间，万事皆空。时间的供给，的确是每天发生的奇迹，仔细想想，这着实令人惊诧。早晨醒来，瞧！你的钱包里神奇地装上了24小时，这是你整个生命世界里未尝加工的一部分。这24小时是属于你的最宝贵的财富。时间是相当特殊的商品，总是以一种和这商品本身一样特殊的方式大量地赠予你！

For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.

注意！没人可以夺走你的时间。时间是偷不走的。别人得到的时间不会比你多，也不会比你少。

Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say:—"This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

说说理想的民主吧！在时间的领域里，财富没有特权，知识也没有特权。即便是天才，每天也不可能比别人多拥有哪怕一小时。同样，也没有时间上的惩罚。即使你肆意浪费这无比贵重的商品，你的时间之源也并不会丧失。没有某种神秘的力量会说：“这人如果不是无赖，一定是傻瓜。他不配拥有时间；应将他的时间供应从计量表中切断。”时间比长期债券更可靠，时间的支付不受是不是礼拜天的影响。再者，你不能预支未来，因此不会欠下时间债！浪费的只可能是过去那一刻，而不可能浪费明天，明天给你预留着呢；你也不能浪费接下来的一小时，它也为你保留着。

I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not?

我说过这就是奇迹，难道不是吗？

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness—the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends!—depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-date as they are, are not full of "How to Live on a Given Income of Time," instead of "How to Live on a Given Income of Money"! Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross heaps.

每天你得靠这24小时生活。从这每天的24小时里，你要拥有健康、获取快乐、挣得财富、获得满足和尊重以及你不朽灵魂的升华。怎样恰当、有效地利用时间是一个最急迫、最令人振奋的实际问题。一切都取决于怎样利用时间。你的快乐——你们都竭力追求却难得拥有的欢乐——都取决于对时间的利用，我的朋友们！奇怪的是，各报载文尽管看上去颇有创意又新潮，却鲜有文章谈论“怎样用固定的时间收入过活”，而更多的是“怎样靠固定的金钱收入过日子”！金钱远比时间平常。细想一下，就会发现金钱是世界上最普通的东西。累累金钱，触目皆是。

If one can't contrive to live on a certain income of money, one earns a little more—or steals it, or advertises for it. One doesn't necessarily muddle one's life because one can't quite manage on a thousand pounds a year; one braces the muscles and makes it guineas1, and balances the budget. But if one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's life definitely. The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.

如果一个人不能靠一定的收入过活，那么他要么去多挣钱，要么去偷盗，要么就登广告去讨钱。一个人一年一千英镑都不够花，并不意味着他一定会把生活搞糟；他鼓足干劲多赚钱，把一千英磅变成一千几尼，就能平衡收支。但是如果一个人不能妥善利用一天得到的这24小时来支付所有时间开销，他的生活绝对是一团糟。尽管时间的供应固定，让人欣慰，可同时时间有限得近乎残酷。

Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say lives, I do not mean exists, nor "muddles through." Which of us is free from that uneasy feeling that the "great spending departments" of his daily life are not managed as they ought to be? Which of us is quite sure that his fine suit is not surmounted by a shameful hat, or that in attending to the crockery he has forgotten the quality of the food? Which of us is not saying to himself—which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shall alter that when I have a little more time"?

我们中有谁过好了一天的24小时？我说的过好意思不是活着或“浑浑噩噩地活着”。日常生活的“重大消耗部”没掌管好，谁不曾有过这样的不安？谁能肯定自己笔挺的西装搭上寒酸的帽子，风度不会减损？谁又能肯定自己因专心观赏盛装食物的陶器而忽略了食物本身的品质？我们谁不正在乃至一生都在对自己说：“等我有多一点时间了，将会有所改变”？

We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is. It is the realisation of this profound and neglected truth (which, by the way, I have not discovered) that has led me to the minute practical examination of daily time-expenditure.

我们永远不会有更多的时间。我们现在跟以往一样，所有的时间也就这么多。正是意识到这一深刻而又往往被人忽略的真理（顺便说一句，这并非是我的发现），我才来仔细研究实际生活中我们每天是如何花费时间的。

(1)几尼，1663年英国发行的一种金币，1813年停止流通，后仅指等于1.05英磅的币值单位。