《瓦尔登湖·第十一章·更高的法则·Higher Laws》第10节
“How happy’s he who hath due place assigned / To his beasts and disafforested his mind! / * * * * * / Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev’ry beast, / And is not ass himself to all the rest! / Else man not only is the herd of swine, / But he’s those devils too which did incline / Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse.” All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely. I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject,—I care not how obscene my words are,—but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.
注释摘要
梭罗在这里引用的诗行，出自十七世纪英国诗人约翰·多恩——他并没有署名，可能有意让这段话像一条匿名的道德训诫般突然插入论述之中。这几行诗的核心比喻是把人的各种欲望、冲动比作需要管束的野兽：马、羊、狼，以及所有的“兽”。人能“分派其位”，在自己的内心给这些野兽划定恰当的领域，并且“为自己心灵解除猎场限制”——disafforested这个词本意是解除森林的猎场…