英语励志美文：重新把握命运

重新把握命运 Children used to play a game of pointing at someone, suddenly saying, “What are you?” Some people answered by saying, “I am a human being,” or by nationality, or by religion. 过去，孩子们通常会玩这样的游戏突然指着一个人说：“你是干什么的？”有些 人会回答：“我是一个人。”或回答是哪国人，或是哪个宗教的信徒。 When this question was put to me by a new generation of children, I answered, “an anthropologist.” 当新一代的孩子这样问我时，我答道：“我是一个人类学家。” Anthropology is the study of whole ways of life, to which one must be completely committed, all the time. So that when I speak of what I believe as a person, I cannot separate this from what I believe as an anthropologist. 人类学是对人类所有生活方式的研究，需要一个人将全部的精力与时间都投入其中。 所以，在谈论信仰时，我无法将自己作为一个人的信仰与作为一个人类学家的信仰区 分开来。 I believe that to understand human beings it is necessary to think of them as part of the whole living world. Our essential humanity depends not only on the complex biological structure which has been developed through the ages from very simple beginnings, but also upon the great social inventions which have been made by human beings, perpetuated by human beings, and in turn give human beings their stature as builders, thinkers, statesmen, artists, seers, and prophets. 我相信，把人类看作整个世界的一部分，对了解人类是十分必要的。除了经历漫长岁 月，由最初简单的生命形式发展成为的复杂生物结构，决定人性本质的因素还有人类 社会的众多伟大发明。人类创造并一直使用着它们，而反过来它们也将诸如建筑师、 思想家、政治家、艺术家、观察家、预言家等身份赋予了人类。 I believe that each of these great inventionslanguage, the family, the use of tools, government, science, art, and philosophyhas the quality of so combining the potentialities of every human temperament, that each can be learned and perpetuated by any group of human beings, regardless of race, and regardless of the type of civilization within which their progenitors lived; so that a newborn infant from the most primitive tribe in New Guinea is as intrinsically capable of graduation from Harvard, or writing a sonnet, or inventing a new form of radar as an infant born on Beacon Hill. 我坚信，这样的特性存在于每一项伟大的发明之中，比如语言、家庭、工具的使用、 政府、科学、艺术和哲学，将每个人性格中的潜能巧妙地结合起来。无论任何种族、 任何文明的后裔，任何一个人类群体都能学习并将它发扬光大。所以，一个新几内亚 岛最原始部落的新生婴儿完全有能力从哈佛大学毕业，写出一首十四行诗或发明一种 新型的雷达，就像出生在比肯山的孩子那样。 But I believe, also, that once a child has been reared in New Guinea or Boston or Leningrad or Tibet, he embodies the culture within which he is reared, and differs from those who are reared elsewhere so deeply, that only by understanding these differences can we reach an awareness which will give us a new control over our human destiny. 但我也相信，在新几内亚岛、波士顿、列宁格勒或是西藏长大的孩子，必定具备不同 于他人的、属于自己国家的文化特性。这些文化特性对他们有着深远的影响，因此要 想真正了解如何重新把握人类的命运，必须首先理解这些差异。 I believe that human nature is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically evil, but individuals are born with different combinations of innate potentialities, and that it will depend upon how they are rearedto trust and love and experiment and create, or to fear and hate and conformwhat kind of human beings they can become. 我相信，人性本无善恶之分，每个人生来都是先天潜能的不同组合，而决定人性善恶 的是他们所接受的教育是教育他们去信任、爱、试验和创造，还是教育他们去恐 惧、仇恨和顺从他们的人格也由此决定。 I believe that we have not even begun to tap human potentialities, and that by continuing humble but persistent study of human behavior, we can learn consciously to create civilizations within which an increasing proportion of human beings will realize more of what they have it in them to be. 我认为，人类的潜能甚至还不曾开始发挥，我相信只要以谦恭的态度坚持不懈地研究 人类行为，让越来越多的人发现自身更多的潜能，我们就能自觉地学会创造文明。 I believe that human life is given meaning through the relationship which the individuals conscious goals have to the civilization, period, and country within which one lives. 我相信，人的生命之所以有意义，正是由于其个人树立的目标与他所处的文明、时代 和国家之间有着密切的联系。 At times, the task may be to fence a wilderness, to bridge a river, or rear sons to perpetuate a young colony. Today, it means taking upon ourselves the task of creating one world in su