And America, to its credit, can also show us a lot of sensible men and women who have denounced all this and have walked out of it.
足以令美国自豪的是,我们发现美国也有一些对这一切进行抨击并从中摆脱出来的有识之士。
But this book is about the English, not the Americans. Now 'Englishness', with its relation to the unconscious, its dependence upon instinct and intuition, cannot break its links with the past: it has deep long roots.
不过,本书所要描写的是英国人,不是美国人。再说英国人特性,因与潜意识相关联,又依赖于本能和直觉而存在,故不能割断与过去的联系:它根深蒂固。源远流长。
Being itself a state of mind, it cannot ignore other states of mind and cannot help feeling that Admass, with its ruthless competitiveness, its idea of man simply as a producer and consumer, its dependence upon dissatisfaction, greed and envy, must be responsible for bad and not good states of mind. Furthermore, while Englishness is not hostile to change, it is deeply suspicious of change for change’s sake, rejecting the idea that we are now committed to some inevitable mechanical progress.
英国人特性本身是一种精神境界,因而它不能不注意其他的精神境界。也就不能不觉得商业广告推销,由于其残酷的竞争性,其将人仅仅看作生产者和消费者的思想观念,其对不知足心理、贪婪和妒忌心理的依存性而必然会导致坏的而不是好的精神境界。而且,尽管英国人并不反对变革,但对于为变革而变革的做法却深怀疑虑,对那种认为我们现在必须无条件地欢迎机械化的进步的观点也拒不接受。
Here we might take a concrete example.
在此我们可以举一个具体的例子。
Englishness' would support an immediate demand, at the expense of many other things, for more and better housing.
英国人会不惜一切代价来支持人们对于更多更好的住房的刻不容缓的需求。
Without adequate shelter and a decent place to call their own, people feel wretched.
如果没有足够的安身之处,没有一个属于自己的像样的房子,人们会感到凄惨。
But people in England, not a big country, do not have to have more and more and larger and larger cars, with longer and wider motorways, wrecking the countryside, to take the cars.
但在英国这样一个不太大的国家里,人们并不一定需要拥有越来越多、越来越大的轿车以及供这些轿车使用的越来越长、越来越宽的高速公路,因为这样会破坏乡村自然景色。
If they think they do, this is 'Admass' at work. People have wanted houses for centuries, and cars of their own only for a very short time.
假如他们认为需要这些,那便是商业广告推销在作祟。人们渴望拥有自己的房屋已经有千百年的历史了。而渴望拥有自己的汽车才只是很短时期的事。
To put cars and motorways before houses seems to 'Englishness' a communal imbecility.
就英国人特性而言,把汽车和公路摆到住房之上的做法似乎是一种社会性的愚蠢之举。