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Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau's idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one's perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.
为拥有而拥有或者为了与邻里相互攀比而拥有，这属于梭罗心目中的低层次。他心目中的高层次是这样一种积极向上的律条，即要使自己对自然界永恒之物的感悟臻于完美。他可将从低层次上节省下来的时间和精力用于对高层次的追求。当然，梭罗不赞成忍饥挨饿，但他在食物方面投入的精力只是为了让自己得以从事更为重要的活动。
Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfactions we get from a lifetime depend on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of "The pleasure of taking pains." The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.
努力奋斗是获取幸福的关键所在。我们如果不终生与困难较量，便无幸福可言。正如叶芝所言，除却某些不可能的情形，我们人生中所获取的满足皆取决于我们在多高的境界中选择 我们所愿意面对的艰难困苦。罗怕特•弗罗斯特论及“以苦为乐”时，他内心所思，大体如此。商业广告中所鼓吹的幸福观，其致命的谬误在于它标榜一切幸福唾手可得，不费吹灰之力。
We demand difficulties even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When the spoilsport ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.
即便于游戏之中，我们也需要有艰难困苦。之所以需要它，是因为若没有困难，便无游戏可言。游戏就是为了享受其中的乐趣而人为地使事情变得不那么轻而易举。游戏中的种种规则，便是将困难强加于人。有些扫兴的人会使游戏变得索然无味、毫无乐趣可言，往往是因为不遵循游戏规则。下象棋时,如果你可以随心所欲，根据自己的意愿修改那些完全是任意赋予的游戏规则，获胜会更容易，然而下棋的乐趣就在于在规则内获胜。无困难，便亦无乐趣。
