《瓦尔登湖·第一章·经济篇·Economy》第3节
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:— Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, / Et documenta damus quâ simus origine nati. Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,— “From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, / Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.” So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell. Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里，把人们引以为常的劳作彻底翻转过来，指出那根本不是什么谋生，而是一种自我埋葬。开头的“labor under a mistake”本身就是个双关：人既在错误之下受苦，也在错误里劳作。他们以为自己在生活，但“人的更好的部分”早就像肥料一样被犁进土里，供养的不是灵魂，而是脚下那块永远要你更卖力的土地。这个比喻很狠——精神、闲暇、灵性，这些才是一个…