《瓦尔登湖·第十一章·更高的法则·Higher Laws》第5节
It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way,—as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn,—and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里把饮食问题推到了本章最尖锐的位置，也暴露了他整本书中最激烈的道德张力。他想讨论的早已不是吃鱼还是不吃鱼，而是人能不能找到一种不至于让自己的想象力——这个词在他这里差不多等于灵魂里最高贵的那个部分——感到羞耻的饮食方式。 “做一顿简单干净的饭，不冒犯想象力，这很困难”，这句话的措辞本身就说明了问题：梭罗不是用肠胃在衡量食物，而是用想象，用那个联…