Change Makes Life Beautiful生命美于變化

By Walter Pater

To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without-our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat.

將一切事物和事物的原則統統看作經常變化著的形態或風尚，日益成為近代思想界的趨勢。讓我們從表面的事情——我們的生理活動說起。譬如說，選取這么一個微妙的時刻，即在酷暑中猛然浸入滔滔清流的那一剎那和極其愉快的感覺。

What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibers, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them ---the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain under every ray of light and sound---processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces.

在那一剎那間的全部生理活動，難道不是具有科學名稱的各種元素的一種化合作用嗎?不過，這些元素，像磷、石灰、微細的纖維質，不僅存在于人體之中，而且在與人體毫不相干的地方也能檢查出它們的存在。我們的生理活動——血液的流通，眼睛中水晶體的消耗和恢復，每一道光波、每一次聲浪對于腦組織所引起的變異——都不外是這些元素的永久的運動，而科學把這些運動過程還原為更為簡單和基本的力量的作用。

Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations.

正像我們身體所賴以構成的元素一樣，這些力量在我們身體以外也同樣發揮著作用——它可以使鐵生銹，使谷物成熟。這些元素，在種種氣流吹送之下，在我們身外向四面八方傳播：人的誕生，人的姿態，人的死亡，以及在人的墳頭上生長出紫羅蘭——這不過是成千上萬化合結果的點滴例子而己。

That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group theme design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. This at least of flame---like our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways.

人類那輪廓分明、長久不變的面顏和肢體，不過是一種表象，在它那框架之內，我們好把種種化合的元素凝聚一團——這好像是蛛網的紋樣，那織網的細絲從網中穿出，又引向他方。在這一點上，我們的生命有些像那火焰——它也是種種力量會合的結果，這會合雖不斷延續，那些力量卻早晚要各自飄散。