By Charles W. Eliot
THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE, from The Durable Satisfactions of Life, by Charles William Eliot, 1910.
Charles William Eliot （1834-1926）, American educationalist; teacher of mathematics and chemistry at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1853-1896;president of Harvard University, 1869-1909; the man who introduced the elective system of studies into American colleges.The Durable Satisfactions of Life was the last book published by President Eliot.
For educated men what are the sources of the solid and durable satisfactions of life? I hope you are all aiming at the solid, durable satisfactions of life, not primarily the gratifications of this moment or of to-morrow, but the satisfactions that are going to last and grow. So far as I have seen, there is one indispensable foundation for the satisfactions of life—health. A young man ought to be a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal. That is the foundation for everything else, and I hope you will all be that, if you are nothing more. We have to build everything in this world of domestic joy and professional success, everything of a useful, honorable career, on bodily wholesomeness and vitality. This being a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal involves a good deal. It involves not condescending to the ordinary barbaric vices. One must avoid drunkenness, gluttony, licentiousness, and getting into dirt of any kind, in order to be a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal. Still, none of you would be content with this achievement as the total outcome of your lives. It is a happy thing to have in youth what are called animal spirits—a very descriptive phrase; but animal spirits do not last even in animals; they belong to the kitten or puppy stages. It is a wholesome thing to enjoy for a time, or for a time each day all through life, sports and active bodily exercise. These are legitimate enjoyments, but, if made the main object of life, they tire. They cease to be a source of durable satisfaction. Play must be incidental in a satisfactory life.
What is the next thing, then, that we want in order to make sure of durable satisfactions in life? We need a strong mental grip, a wholesome capacity for hard work. It is intellectual power and aims that we need. In all the professions—learned, scientific, or industrial—large mental enjoyments should come to educated men. The great distinction between the privileged class to which you belong, the class that has opportunity for prolonged education, and the much larger class that has not that opportunity is that the educated class lives mainly by the exercise of intellectual powers and gets therefore much greater enjoyment out of life than the much larger class that earns a livelihood chiefly by the exercise of bodily powers. You ought to obtain here, therefore, the trained capacity for mental labor, rapid, intense, and sustained. That is the great thing to get in college, long before the professional school is entered. Get it now. Get it in the years of college life. It is the main achievement of college life to win this mental force, this capacity for keen observation, just inference, and sustained thought, for everything that we mean by the reasoning power of man. That capacity will be the main source of intellectual joys and of happiness and content throughout a long and busy life.
But there is something more, something beyond this acquired power of intellectual labor. As Shakespeare puts it, “the purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.” How is that treasure won? It comes by living with honor, on honor. Most of you have begun already to live honorably and honored, for the life of honor begins early. Some things the honorable man cannot do, never does. He never wrongs or degrades a woman. He never oppresses or cheats a person weaker or poorer than himself. He is honest, sincere, candid, and generous. It is not enough to be honest. An honorable man must be generous and I do not mean generous with money only. I mean generous in his judgments of men and women, and of the nature and prospects of mankind. Such generosity is a beautiful attribute of the man of honor.
How does honor come to a man? What is the evidence of the honorable life? What is the tribunal which declares at last,“This was an honorable man”? You look now for the favorable judgment of your elders, —of parents and teachers and older students; but these elders will not be your final judges, and you had better get ready now in college to appear before the ultimate tribunal, the tribunal of your contemporaries and the younger generations. It is the judgment of your contemporaries that is most important to you; and you will find that the judgment of your contemporaries is made up alarmingly early, —it may be made up this year in a way that sometimes lasts for life and beyond. It is made up in part by persons to whom you have never spoken, by persons who in your view do not know you, and who get only a general impression of you; but always it is your contemporaries whose judgment is formidable and unavoidable. Live now in the fear of that tribunal, —not an abject fear, because independence is an indispensable quality in the honorable man. There is an admirable phrase in the Declaration of Independence, a document which it was the good fashion of my time for boys to commit to memory. I doubt if that fashion still obtains. Some of our public action looks as if it did not. “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature/'s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” That phrase—“a decent respect”—is a very happy one. Cherish “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” but never let that interfere with your personal declaration of independence. Begin now to prepare for the judgment of the ultimate tribunal.
Look forward to the important crises of your life. They are nearer than you are apt to imagine. It is a very safe protective rule to live to-day as if you are going to marry a pure woman within a month. That rule you will find a safeguard for worthy living. It is a good rule to endeavor hour by hour and week after week to learn to work hard. It is not well to take four minutes to do what you can accomplish in three. It is not well to take four years to do what you can perfectly accomplish in three. It is well to work intensely. You will hear a good deal of advice about letting your soul grow and breathing in without effort the atmosphere of a learned society or place of learning. Well, you cannot help breathing and you cannot help growing; these processes will take care of themselves. The question for you from day to day is how to learn to work to advantage, and college is the place and now is the time to win mental power. And, lastly, live to-day and every day like a man of honor.
Notes
durable, enduring; lasting; that which does not wear out or decay soon.
gratifications, the giving of pleasure and satisfaction; pleasures.
indispensable, absolutely necessary or requisite.
wholesomeness, healthfulness, soundness of body and mind and morals.
vitality, power of enduring or continuing; vital force or animation.
condescending, deferring; stooping or descending; giving in to.
gluttony, excessive eating; eating too much; extravagant indulgence of the appetite for food.
licentiousness, lack of restraint; lawlessness; immorality.
animal spirits, figuratively, as applied to human beings, animal stresses the ascendancy, the dominant control, of the animal nature. Spirits are animal that pertain to the merely sentient, the feeling, part of a creature, as distinguished from the intellectual, rational, spiritual part. Spirits is here used in the sense of temper, liveliness, energy, vivacity, courage, and qualities of the like nature.
kitten or puppy stages, childhood stages; days of early childhood.
incidental, occupying as inferior position; playing an unimportant part; subordinate.
grip, power or force to hold securely.
prolonged education, education that is lengthened in time; schooling that we continue for many years without interruption.
livelihood, means of supporting life; maintenance; living sustenance.
professional school, where the student is given training in one of the learned or skilled professions, such as engineering, law, medicine, religion, and education.
inference, a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted; conclusion; deduction.
sustained, maintained or carried on; keep from discontinuing.
“the purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation, ”from Shakespeare,Richard II, I, i, 177, 178. The most important thing that we can get out of life is an unblemished, irreproachable, spotless reputation. Reputation is the estimation in which a person is held by his contemporaries.
degrades, cheapens; dishonors; shames; humiliates.
candid, free from undue bias; fair; just; impartial; frank.
generous, liberal; noble; magnanimous; characterized by generosity.
attribute, characteristic quality; that which is recognized as appropriate to the person or office.
tribunal, court of justice; the group of qualified persons who pass judgment.
“This was an honorable man, ”from Shakespeare,Pericles, IV, vi, 54.
ultimate tribunal, that court that passes the final judgment; the group whose judgment is most important to a person.
contemporaries, persons who belong to the same time.
alarmingly early, very, very early; so early as to be alarming.
abject fear, a fear that casts a person down in spirit or hope; fear that reduces to a low condition; slavish fear; cringing and groveling fear.
Declaration of Independence, the American Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776, in which the American colonists declared their independence of their mother-country England.
decent respect, proper respect; kind and reasonable respect; respect which would be in good taste and decorous.
crises,the plural form of crisis, decisive moment;turning point;time of difficulty or danger.
safeguard, proviso or stipulation or quality or circumstance that tends to prevent some evil or guard against trouble; protection.
Questions
1. What are the three sources of the durable satisfactions of life?
2. What is involved in being a clean, wholesome, vigorous animal?
3. What is the main achievement of college life?
4. What are the attributes of the man of honor?
5. Why is the judgment of your contemporaries most important to you ?
参考译文
【作品简介】
《对生活的持久满足》一文选自查尔斯·W．艾略特所著《对生活的持久满足》,1910年出版。
【作者简介】
查尔斯·W．艾略特（1834—1926），美国教育家。1853—1896年在哈佛大学和麻省理工学院任教，教授数学及化学；1869—1909年任哈佛大学校长；正是他把选修课制度引入美国大学。《对生活的持久满足》是艾略特校长出版的最后一本书。