I customarily do what I do thoroughly and make but one step on it; I havt rarely any movement that hides itself and steals away from my reason, and that does not proceed in the matter by the consent of all my faculties, without division or intestine sedition; my judgment is to have all the blame or all the praise; and the blame it once has, it has always; for almost from my infancy it has ever been one: the same
inclination, the same turn, the same force; and as to universal opinions, I fixed myself from my childhood in the place where I resolved to stick. There are some sins that are impetuous, prompt, and sudden; let us set them aside: but in these other sins so often repeated, deliberated, and contrived, whether sins of complexion or sins of profession and vocation, I cannot conceive that they should have so long been settled in the same resolution, unless the reason and conscience of him who has them, be constant to have them; and the repentance he boasts to be inspired with on a sudden, is very hard for me to imagine or form. I follow not the opinion of the Pythagorean sect, "that men take up a new soul when they repair to the images of the gods to receive their oracles," unless he mean that it must needs be extrinsic, new, and lent for the time; our own showing so little sign of purification and cleanness, fit for such an office.
我做事向来特立独行,喜欢一步到位;我很少有什么行为需要躲躲闪闪或逃避理智;我所做的每一件事都是全然出于本意，不会在自己的内心里产生矛盾和挣扎。我完全凭自己的判断力来决定是非对错，一旦它认为什么是错误的,便会一直这样认为下去;几乎从幼年时起,我便始终如此:同样的倾向,同样的性情,同样的力度。在对一些普遍问题的看法上,我向来的态度就是一旦认准,便坚持到底。我们先抛开那些突如其来且来势凶猛、迅速的罪恶,只谈那些常常是蓄意的、人为所犯的罪过。无论是形势所迫,还是习惯使然,既然已扎根在一个人的心里如此之久,我认为这些罪恶必定得到了他的理智和良心的呵护,因此,实在令人难以想象,他会像自己所吹嘘的那样,由于突然产生的悔恨而改过自新。毕达哥拉斯学派的观点是:当人到神像面前去领受神谕时,便获得了一个全新的灵魂。我并不赞同这个说法,除非这句话的意思是说,人在领受神谕时,他的灵魂需要为这一特别时刻而洗心革面;因为若想进行这一神圣的仪式，,我们的灵魂必须如此更加纯洁、干净才行。
They act quite contrary to the stoical precepts, who do indeed command us to cоrect the imperfections and vices we know ourselves guilty of, but forbid us therefore to disturb the repose of our souls: these make us believe that they have great grief and remorse within: but of amendment, cоrrection, or interruption, they make nothing appear. It cannot be a cure if the malady be not wholly discharged; if repentance were laid upon the scale of the balance, it would weigh down sin. I find no quality so casy to counterfeit as devotion, if men do not conform their manners and life to the profession; its essence is abstruse and occult; the appearance easy and ostentatious. In all affairs that are past, be it how it will, I have very little regret; for this imagination puts me out of my pain, that they were so to fall out they are in the great revolution of the world, and in the chain of stoical causes: your fancy cannot, by wish and imagination, move one tittle, but that the great current of things will not reverse both the past and the future.
毕达哥拉斯学派的人在任何方面的做法都与斯多葛学派的规范反其道而行之。斯多葛学派确实是要我们改正我们所知的自身存在的不足之处和恶习,但却不准我们为此而扰乱自己内心的宁静;而毕达哥拉斯学派则使我们相信他们的心中充满了内疚与自责,但却丝毫看不到他们有痛改前非、与恶习决裂的迹象。不将病根除去，就不能算痊愈;如果把悔恨放到天平的秤盘上，它的重量会大于罪过。我发现,如果人们不按照神的谕示去规范自己的言行举止和日常生活的话,没有比宗教虔诚更容易假装的品质了;虔诚的本质是深奥而神秘的,而它的表现则是容易的、夸张的。对于过去的任何事，无论是好是坏,我很少后悔;因为我想像它们原本就该如此,它们符合世间的规律,而且已进人了斯多葛派思想的因果循环之中:不会因你的愿望和想像而有丝毫的改变,世间万物的发展趋势、过去和未来的顺序,都不会因此而逆转。这样一想,我就不会感觉苦恼了。
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