《瓦尔登湖·第一章·经济篇·Economy》第10节
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,—that is, keep comfortably warm,—and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course à la mode.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里把人的基本需要归结为一个朴素的核心：保持体温。在此之前他刚刚列举了生活必需品——食物、住所、衣服、燃料——但此刻他把这四样东西统一在一条原则之下。他说，身体的最高需求就是保暖，维持那股“生命之热”。为此我们不但操心衣食住，连睡眠用的床铺也被他说成是一种“夜间的衣服”，其材料来自掠夺鸟巢、拔取鸟类的羽毛和胸绒。把床比作衣服，又把衣服和住所的功用…