HOWTOGROWOLD罗素.doc
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1、-!HOW TO GROW OLDBy Bertrand Russell罗素(1872-1970),是一个活了99岁的哲学家。然而,他最大的魅力却不是哲学,而是文学。曾经获得诺贝尔文学奖文学中最高奖项的他,用自己的朴实优美的语言为你讲述怎样才能度过一个成功的晚年。1. In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to c
2、hoose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of
3、remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.2. A great grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descenda
4、nts. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow, devoted herself to womans higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women.
5、 She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. “Good gracious”, she exclaimed, “I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted fro
6、m one of them, I should have a dismal existence!” “Madre snaturale,” he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular sc
7、ience. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the nu
8、mber of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of you future.3. As regards health I have nothing useful to say since I have little experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it
9、is good for health, though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.4. Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about fr
10、iends who are dead. Ones thoughts must be directed to the future and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy: ones own past is gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that ones emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and ones mind keener
11、. If this is true it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.5. The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interest
12、ed in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interest in them, but ones interest should be contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but not unduly emotional. Animals become in
13、different to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves, but human beings, owing to the length of infancy, find this difficult.6. I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this sphere that
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