桑塔耶纳 | 英伦独语：社交与孤独

乔治·桑塔耶纳（George Santayana）：（1863-1952）西班牙自然主义哲学家、美学家，代表作《美感》、《诗与哲学》、《英伦独语》。本篇随笔收录于散文集《英伦独语》，该文集成书于第一次世界大战期间，当时作者游学于英国牛津，战争使他愈加憧憬远方的自然，也使他对孤独和

Society and Solitude

社交与孤独

文/George Santayana

译/语非

O solitudo, sola beatitudo, Saint Bernard said; but might he not have said just as well, O societas, sola felicitas? Just as truly, I think; because when a man says that the only happiness is this or that, he is like a lover saying that Mary Jane is the one woman in the world. She may be truly the one woman for him, though even that is not probable; but he cannot mean to assert that she is the only woman living, nor to deny that each of the others might be the one woman for somebody.

圣伯纳德有言曰：“孤独啊，至福也”，若改为“社交啊，极乐也”也未尝不可。在我看来，皆有道理。若有一男子说某某最令他欢欣，就好比“情人眼里出西施”。西施可能确实是他情有独钟的女子（虽说这也不大可能），但不可曲解为世上唯有西施一女子，更不消说其他女子亦可能是其他男人的思慕之人。

克莱尔沃的圣伯纳德（Saint Bernard of Clairvaux）：法国中世纪教士、神学者，曾奉罗马教皇命令组织第二次十字军东征

Now, when a Hegelian philosopher, contradicting Saint Bernard, says that society is his be-all and end-all, that he himself is nothing but an invisible point at which relations cross, and that if you removed from him his connection with Hegel, with his university, his church, his wife, and his publishers, there would be nothing left, or at best a name and a peg to hang a gown on, far be it from me to revise his own analysis of his nature; society may be the only felicity and the only reality for him. But that cannot annul the judgement of Saint Bernard.

如今，有一位黑波尔派学者与圣伯纳德意见相左，他坦言，社交是其生命要义，依他来看，人无非是人际关系错综而成的无形交点，以至于若是将他的黑格尔、大学、教堂、妻子、出版商与之断绝，他将一无所有，或是化为一枚挂钩及其他有名无实之物。我无意歪曲他对自我本质之剖析，社交可能确实如他所言是他的唯一至福和唯一实相，但这无法驳倒圣伯纳德的论断。

He had a great mind and a great heart, and he knew society well; at least, he accepted the verdict which antiquity had passed on society, after a very long, brilliant, and hearty experience of it; and he knew the religious life and solitude as well; and I can't help thinking that he, too, must have been right in his self-knowledge, and that solitude must have been the only happiness for him.

圣伯纳德胸襟开阔、心境豁达，他也深谙社交之道。至少，他在经年累月、全心全意、轰轰烈烈地投入社交生活后，领受了前人对社交的论断，而且他亦深谙宗教生活和孤独境界。可以说，他颇有自知之明，并且孤独也委实是其极乐。

Nevertheless, the matter is not limited to this confronting of divers honest judgements, or confessions of moral experience. The natures expressed in these judgements have a long history, and are on different levels; the one may be derived from the other. Thus it is evident that the beatific solitude of Saint Bernard was filled with a kind of society; he devoted it to communion with the Trinity, or to composing fervent compliments to the Virgin Mary. It was only the society to be found in inns and hovels, in castles, sacristies, and refectories, that he thought it happiness to avoid. That the wilderness to which hermits flee must be peopled by their fancy, could have been foreseen by any observer of human nature.

说是事实论断也好，说是精神坦陈也罢，虽迥然相异，但关键并不在于二者之相悖。上述观点的本质渊源颇深，层次不一，且有相互派生之嫌。毋庸置疑，圣伯纳德的孤独之乐也隐含了某种程度的交往：即与“圣三一”的精神交融，抑或是对圣母的顶礼膜拜。于他而言，酒坊、陋室、古堡、祭衣间、食堂里的社交正是需要避讳的乐事，而荒郊野岭满盈着来此遁世的隐士的美好愿景，对此，体察人情者早有预见。

Tormenting demons or ministering angels must needs appear, because man is rooted in society and his instincts are addressed to it; for the first nine months, or even years, of his existence he is a parasite; and scarcely are these parental bonds a little relaxed, when he instinctively forms other ties, that turn him into a husband and father, and keep him such all his days. If ever he finds happiness in solitude, it can only be by lavishing on objects of his imagination the attentions which his social functions require that he should lavish on something. Without exercising these faculties somehow his nature would be paralysed; there would be no fuel to feed a spiritual flame.

无论是愁煞众人的恶魔，抑或是温婉可人的天使，它们总会现身，毕竟人的社会属性根深蒂固。自怀胎九月乃至髫龀之年，人无非是寄生于他者，当父母与之维系的纽带稍有松弛，他便自然而然地形成其他联结，为人夫父，并毕生维系之。人的社会属性决定了他必有心念寄托之物，若是将其诉诸于空想之物，孤独之乐便油然而生。如若无从寄托，便顿感心如死灰，魂魄也难以滋养。

All Saint Bernard could mean, then, is that happiness lies in this substitution of an ideal for a natural society, in converse with thoughts rather than with things. Such a substitution is normal, and a mark of moral vigour; we must not be misled into comparing it with a love of dolls or of lap-dogs. Dolls are not impersonal, and lap-dogs are not ideas: they are only less rebellious specimens of the genus thing; they are more portable idols.

圣伯纳德此番真意大抵如此：交往之乐在于以神交取代社交，重精神而轻实物。神交并非奇闻异事，而是精神强健之象征，但不可将其与喜藏珍玩宠爱豺犬之癖好相提并论。珍玩并非不近人情，豺犬亦非理念之物，无非是稍显离经叛道而便于提携的偶像玩物罢了。

To substitute the society of ideas for that of things is simply to live in the mind; it is to survey the world of existences in its truth and beauty rather than in its personal perspectives, or with practical urgency. It is the sole path to happiness for the intellectual man, because the intellectual man cannot be satisfied with a world of perpetual change, defeat, and imperfection. It is the path trodden by ancient philosophers and modern saints or poets; not, of course, by modern writers on philosophy (except Spinoza), because these have not been philosophers in the vital sense; they have practised no spiritual discipline, suffered no change of heart, but lived on exactly like other professors, and exerted themselves to prove the existence of a God favourable to their own desires, instead of searching for the God that happens to exist.

以神交取代社交乃是纯然的精神生活，是对实在世界的真善美之求索，而非出于实际所需对人情世故之体察。对于智者而言，此乃通往喜乐之蹊径，毕竟智者难以消受这始终变幻、腐朽不堪、满是缺憾的人间。无数古代先哲、近代贤士和诗翁曾踏此蹊径，而近代文人却不曾涉足此路（斯宾诺莎是个例外），因为此等墨客并非真正的哲人，他们未曾领受心智的戒律，亦不曾饱尝精神转折之苦楚，而是如芸芸教授一般竭力论证神明的存在，但这“神”是他们一厢情愿、满足私欲的神，而非冥冥中早已注定的“神”。

巴鲁赫·德·斯宾诺莎（Baruch de Spinoza）：17世纪荷兰哲学家，与笛卡尔和莱布尼茨齐名为近代西方哲学的三大理性主义者。

Certainly this path, in its beginnings, is arduous, and leaves the natural man somewhat spare and haggard; he seems to himself to have fasted for forty days and forty nights, and the world regards his way of living afterwards as rather ghostly and poor. But he usually congratulates himself upon it in the end; and of those who persevere some become saints and some poets and some philosophers.Yet why, we may ask, should happiness be found exclusively in this ideal society where none intrudes? If the intellectual man cannot lay up his treasures in a world of change, the natural man can perfectly well satisfy his instincts within it; and why shouldn't the two live amicably together in a house of two stories?

初涉此路必然艰险，凡夫俗子若攀之，有如经历斋戒四十昼夜，形容憔悴；在外人看来则是虽生犹死，穷困潦倒。凡一以贯之者，皆满怀欣慰，日后便化为圣贤、诗翁及哲人。或有人疑之：为何“至福”偏偏拾得于人迹罕至的理想境界？在这恒变的世间，既然智者无从留存珍宝，既然俗人每每餍足私欲，为何不能将二者分层居于同一楼宇之内呢？

I can see no essential reason; but historically natural society long ago proved a moral failure. It could not harmonize nor decently satisfy even the instincts on which it rests. Hence the philosophers have felt bound not only to build themselves a superstructure but to quit the ground floor — materially, if possible, by leading a monastic life, religiously in any case by not expecting to find much except weeping and wailing in this vale of tears. We may tax this despair with being premature, and call such a flight into an imaginary world a desperate expedient; at any time the attempts of the natural man to live his comic life happily may be renewed, and may succeed. Solitude peopled with ideas might still remain to employ the mind; but it would not be the only beatitude.Yet the insecurity of natural society runs deeper, for natural society itself is an expedient and a sort of refuge of despair. It, too, in its inception, seemed a sacrifice and a constraint. The primitive soul hates order and the happiness founded on order. The barbarous soul hates justice and peace.

我不得其解，但回顾历史，人伦之社交早已验证了精神之崩坏。纵使是其依附的本能欲求，亦无法调和，无法满足。为此，哲人们深感建构上层建筑、舍弃底层根基之必要，如有可能，还要在物质生活上效仿僧侣，在精神信仰上无所奢求，毕竟我们身处于满是悲恸的无涯苦海。至于遁入臆想，或有人斥之为幼稚之举，或视之为螳臂当车的权宜之计。凡人常常心血来潮，立志过上喜剧人生，并幸而得之；而孤独之境为千头万绪所纷扰，时常萦绕心头，但已不再是其“至福”。然而，人伦社交的不安感更为深切，因为人伦社会本身就是权宜之计，就是绝境中的庇护所。自其源起，人伦社会便意味着奉献和约束，纯粹的灵魂憎恶秩序及建立在其之上的幸福，而野蛮的灵魂憎恶公正与和平。

The belly is always rebelling against the members.It was a single cell floating deliciously in a warm liquid. It vegetated in peace; no noises, no alarms, no lusts, no nonsense. Ah, veritably solitude was blessedness then! But it was a specious solitude and a precarious blessedness, resting on ignorance. The warm liquid might cool, or might dry up; it might breed all sorts of enemies; presently heaven might crack and the cell be cleft in two. Happy the hooded microbe that put forth feelers in time, and awoke to its social or unsocial environment!I am not sure that there was not in Saint Bernard a lingering love of primeval peace, of seminal slumber; that he did not yearn for the cell bio-logical as well as for the cell monastic.

肚腹与各脏器无法协调，它曾是恣意游于温暖体液中的单一细胞，它如植物般陷入平静状态：无声无息，无欲无求。此种孤独之境不正是天赐之福吗？正因蒙昧，其孤独文文默默，其幸福若即若离。体液原本温润，但终将流于寒凉和枯竭，同时助长诸多仇敌，届时细胞破裂，天国崩塌。而睡眼惺忪的微生物适时探出触角，初涉江湖，懵懵懂懂，实乃快哉！我不清楚圣伯纳德是否对古寂之意、怀胎之境有所眷恋，是否如热衷于古刹禅院一般热衷于生物细胞？

Life, mere living, is a profound ideal, pregnant with the memory of a possible happiness, the happiness of protoplasm; and the advocate of moral society must not reckon without his host. His every atom is instinct with a life of its own, upsetting his calculations and destroying his organic systems. Only the physical failure of solitude drove the spirit at first into society, as the moral failure of society may drive it later into solitude again.

生命啊，仅就生存意义而言，何其深邃。它孕育着原生质体的幸福记忆，哪怕这幸福还有待降临。崇尚神交者不可忽视其身躯，他体内的每一颗原子都自有其生命，纷扰着主人的思绪，甚至摧毁其躯体。当孤独之境因生理失调而破灭，人的心灵将趋向俗世；而当社群状态因精神危机而失衡，人的心灵将复归于侘寂。

If any one said, then, that happiness lies only in society, his maxim would be no less sincere and solid than Saint Bernard's, but it would not be so profound. For beneath natural society, in the heart of each of its members, there is always an intense and jealous solitude, the sleep of elemental life which can never be wholly broken; and above natural society there is always another solitude — a placid ethereal wilderness, the heaven of ideas — beckoning the mind.

如若有人声称，至福仅仅在于社交，此句箴言或许和圣伯纳德所谓的“至福在于孤独”同样真诚笃定，但却不及后者深刻。在社群之下，在每位公民心中，始终存在一种执着而崇高的孤独境界和生命本源中不可摧折的宁静；而在社群之上，始终存在另外一种孤独之境，它是理想的天国，它如空灵的旷野一般召唤着我们的心灵。

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