Of Truth(l) 论真理(l)

巴士英语更新于2019-07-30 16:26  浏览  手机访问

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-By Francis Bacon

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in these of the ancients. 

But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposes upon men's thoughts, that does bring lies in favour; but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie itself.

One of the later school of the Grecians examines the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. 

But I cannot tell; this same truth is a naked and open daylight that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that shows best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle that shows best in varied lights.

A mixture of a lie does ever add pleasure. Does any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

参考中文译文

作者:弗兰西斯·培根

真理是什么?彼拉多提这个问题时带着讥笑,他并不等待答案。的确有人喜欢轻率,他们认为:一个信仰就是一种束缚,影响思想与行动的自由。虽然这一类哲学家作为流派已成过去,但仍然留下来某些机智的论辩家,跟他们祖先一脉相承,他们虽说是强弩之末。

人们之所以喜欢谎言,并非仅仅因为人们发现真理的艰难与辛苦,也不是因为真理被发现后要强加于人的头脑,而是因为人们对谎言本身有一种自然的、虽说是腐蚀性的痴情。

某晚期学派的一位希腊学者研究了这件事,并且专门思考人们痴情于谎言的内在原因,发现他们既不像诗人那样是为了快乐,也不像商人那样为了利益,而是为了谎言本身。

但我说不明白,真理就像是赤裸裸的、毫不掩饰的白昼,它不像烛光那样把世上的假面具舞会、哑剧、庆典展现得半明半暗、半严肃半轻松,神秘莫测,真假难辨。真理也许有珍珠的价值,只在白天光彩夺目;但不会升值到钻石或珠宝,在不同的光照下熠熠生辉,璀璨耀眼。

鱼目混珠的谎言总是增添快乐。如果从人的头脑里拿掉虚妄的意见、迷惑人的幻想、虚伪的评价、随意的想象、诸如此类,谁会怀疑他们许多人的头脑变得空虚可怜,充满忧虑、无聊寂寞呢?

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