謝謝大家的鼓勵！ 以後有機會再讀。
V. HUMAN LIFE A POEM
I think that, from a biological standpoint, human life almost reads
like a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of
growth and decay. It begins with innocent childhood, followed by
awkward adolescence trying awkwardly to adapt itself to mature
society, with its young passions and follies, its ideals and ambitions;
then it reaches a manhood of intense activities, profiting from
experience and learning more about society and human nature; at
middle age, there is a slight easing of tension, a mellowing of
character like the ripening of fruit or the mellowing of good wine, and
the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical and at the
same time a kindlier view of life; then in the sunset of our life, the
endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true
philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to
it, it is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and
contentment; finally, life flickers out and one goes into eternal sleep,
never to wake up again. One should be able to sense the beauty of
this rhythm of life, to appreciate, as we do in grand symphonies, its
main theme, its strains of conflict and the final resolution. The
movements of these cycles are very much the same in a normal life,
but the music must be provided by the individual himself. In some
souls, the discordant note becomes harsher and harsher and finally
overwhelms or submerges the main melody. Sometimes the
discordant note gains so much power that the music can no longer
go on, and the individual shoots himself with a pistol or jumps into a
riven But that is because his original leit-motif has been hopelessly
over-shadowed through the lack of a good self-education. Otherwise
the normal human life runs to its normal end in a kind of dignified
movement and procession. There are sometimes in many of us too
many staccatos or impetuosos, and because the tempo is wrong, the
music is not pleasing to the ear; we might have more of the grand
rhythm and majestic tempo of the Ganges, flowing slowly and
eternally into the sea
No one can say that a life with childhood, manhood and old age is
not a beautiful arrangement; the day has its morning, noon and
sunset, and the year has its seasons, and it is good that it is so.
There is no good or bad in life, except what is good according to its
own season. And if we take this biological view of life and try to live
according to the seasons, no one but a conceited fool or an
impossible idealist can deny that human life can be lived like a
poem. Shakespeare has expressed this idea more graphically in his
passage about the seven stages of life, and a good many Chinese
writers have said about the same thing. It is curious that
Shakespeare was never very religious, or very much concerned with
religion. I think this was his greatness; he took human life largely as
it was, and intruded himself as little upon the general scheme of
things as he did upon the characters of his plays. Shakespeare was
like Nature herself, and that is the greatest compliment we can pay
to a writer or thinker. He merely lived, observed life and went away.
