伟大的人永远不老

Track 8

供稿&翻译：一沁

伟大的人永远不老

Track 8

供稿&翻译：一沁

The Great Man Never Grows Old

你或许曾经想过这样一个问题，“一个人到多少岁会开始变老？”或者“我的青春还有多少年？”。对于这些问题，希望你能从本文中找到正确的答案。

“I1)dread coming to the end of the year,” a friend said to me recently, “It makes me realize I am growing old.”

William James注1, the great2)psychologist, said that most men are “old3)fogies at 25.” He was right. Most men at 25 are satisfed with their jobs. They have closed their minds to all new ideas—they have stopped growing.

The minute a man stops growing, he becomes old no matter what his age is. On the other hand, the really great man never grows old.

Goethe注2passed away at 83, and finished Faust only a few years earlier; Gladstone注3started to learn a new language when he was 70. Laplace注4, the4)astronomer, was still working when death caught up with him at 78. He died crying, “What we know is nothing; what we do not know is5)immense!”

And there you have the real answer to the question, “When is a man old?”

Laplace died young at 78. He was still unsatisfed, still sure that he has a lot to learn.

As long as a man can keep himself in that attitude of mind, as long as he can look back on every year and say, “I grew,” he is still young.

The minute he stops growing, the minute he says to himself, “I know all that I need to know,”—that day youth stops. He may be 25 or 75. It makes no difference.

“我惧怕临近岁末年尾，”一位朋友最近对我说，“它让我意识到自己正在衰老。”

伟大的心理学家威廉·詹姆斯曾说过，大多数人“在25岁时就成了守旧落伍之人”。他这话是对的。大多数人在25岁时就满足于他们的工作，把所有的新思想都拒之门外——他们已经停止成长。

一个人一旦停止成长——不管他年纪多大——他已开始衰老。反之，真正的伟人从来不会衰老。

歌德享年83岁，逝世前几年才完成《浮士德》；格莱斯顿70岁开始学习一门新的语言；天文学家拉普拉斯78岁离世之际还在工作着。临死前，他大声喊道：“我们所知的太少太少；我们不知的太多太多！”

“一个人何时变老？”对这个问题，你从这些人身上得到了真正的答案。

拉普拉斯78岁逝世时依然是年轻的——他依然不满足，依然感到自己还有许多东西要学。

一个人，只要他能够保持这种心态，只要他在回首过去的一年时能够说出“我成长了”，他就依然年轻。

而一旦他停止成长，一旦他对自己说“该懂的我都懂了”，这个时候他的青春也就到头了。无论那时他是25岁还是75岁，这都没有区别。

词组加油站

catch up with 追赶上……

make no difference 无关紧要，没有影响

1) dread [dred] v. 害怕，担心

2) psychologist [saɪ'kɒlədʒɪst] n. 心理学家

3) fogy ['fəʊgɪ] n. 守旧者

4) astronomer [ə'strɒnəmə] n. 天文学家

5) immense [ɪ'mens] adj. 巨大的，无边际的

注1：威廉·詹姆斯（William James），美国心理学之父，是美国本土第一位哲学家和心理学家。

注2：约翰·沃尔夫冈·冯·歌德（Johann Wolfgang von Goethe），德国著名思想家、作家、科学家。其代表作有《少年维特之烦恼》《浮士德》等。

注3：威廉·尤尔特·格莱斯顿（William Ewart Gladstone），英国政治家，曾作为自由党人四次出任英国首相。

注4：皮埃尔-西蒙·拉普拉斯侯爵（Pierre-Simon marquis de Laplace），法国著名的天文学家和数学家，是天体力学的主要奠基人。