幸福之道：簡單的事情(二)
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 a tonic 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 than by any conceivable change of philosophy. ( finished)
中文：
（續）只要你觀察一下周圍那些你可稱之為幸福的男男女女，就會看出他們都有某些共同之處。在這些共同之處中有一點是最重要的：那就是活動本身，它在大多數情況下本身就很有趣，而且可逐漸的使你的愿望得以實現。生性喜愛孩子的婦女，能夠從撫養子女中得到這種滿足。藝術家、作家和科學家如果對自己的工作感到滿意，也能以同樣的方式得到快樂。不過，還有很多是較低層次的快樂。許多在城里工作的人到了周末自愿地在自家的庭院里做無償的勞動，春天來時，他們就可盡情享受自己創造的美景帶來的快樂。
在我看來，整個關于快樂的話題一向都被太嚴肅的對待過了。過去一直有這樣的看法：如果沒有一種生活的理論或者宗教信仰，人是不可能幸福的。也許那些由于理論不好才導致不快樂的人需要一種較好的理論幫助他們重新快活起來，就像你生過病需要吃補藥一樣。但是，正常情況下，一個人不吃補藥也應當是健康的；沒有理論也應當是幸福的。真正有關系的是一些簡單的事情。如果一個男人喜愛他的妻子兒女，事業有成，而且無論白天黑夜，春去秋來，總是感到高興，那么不管他的理論如何，都會是快樂的。反之，如果他討厭自己的妻子，受不了孩子們的吵鬧，而且害怕上班；如果他白天盼望夜晚，而到了晚上又巴望著天明，那么，他所需要的就不是一種新的理論，而是一種新的生活――改變飲食習慣，多鍛煉身體等等。
人是動物，他的幸福更多的時候取決于其生理狀況而非思想狀況。這是一個很庸俗的結論，然而我無法使自己懷疑它。我確信，不幸福的商人與其找到新的理論來使自己幸福，還不如每天步行六英里更見效。（完）
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