《瓦尔登湖·第十八章·结束语·Conclusion》第2节
What does Africa,—what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes,—with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.— “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. / Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. / I have more of God, they more of the road.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里把世纪中叶新英格兰人对外部世界的狂热一股脑儿掀翻，转而要求读者将勘探的目光转向内部。他连举非洲、美国西部、尼罗河源头、尼日尔河、密西西比河、绕北美大陆的西北航道，这些名字在他笔下不是地理学上的实在地点，而是当时白人文明向外投射欲望的象征集合。他用“我们自己内部在图表上是不是白色的”这个比喻把整个认识论颠倒过来：地图上留白的地方被视作有待征服的…