That a labourer in the fields should stand very much on the level of the beast that toils with him can be neither desirable nor necessary. He does so as a matter of fact, and one hears that only the dullest-witted peasant will nowadays consent to the peasant life; his children, taught to read the newspaper, make what haste they can to the land of promise -where newspapers are printed. That here is something altogether wrong it needs no evangelist to tell us; the remedy no prophet has as yet even indicated. Husbandry has in our time been glorified in eloquence which for the most part is vain, endeavouring as it does to prove a falsity - that the agricultural life is, in itself, favourable to gentle emotions, to sweet thoughtfulness, and to all the human virtues. Agriculture is one of the most exhausting forms of toil, and, in itself, by no means conducive to spiritual development; that it played a civilizing part in the history of the world is merely due to the fact that, by creating wealth, it freed a portion of mankind from the labour of the plough. Enthusiasts have tried the experiment of turning husbandman; one of them writes of his experience in notable phrase.
"Oh, labour is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified. Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and horses? It is not so.
田地里的劳动者要与跟他一起劳作的牲口处于几乎同等的地位,这既不合理,也没有必要。然而,事实上他就是这样做的;而且我们听说，如今只有最愚笨的农民才会愿意过乡下生活,他的子女们都学会了读报纸，匆忙地赶往那片希望之乡一报纸被印刷出来的地方。我们不需要福音传教士来向我们指出其中的错误之处;就连先知们也没有提出过补救的方法。我们这个时代的雄辩家们极力赞美农业,但大部分都是空谈,实际上他们只是想努力证明一种谎言一一-说什么农业生活对激发高贵的感情、进行愉悦的沉思,以及培养一切人类的美德大有裨益。事实上,农业是一种最辛苦的劳作形式,而且从本质上来说，完全不利于精神的发展。农业之所以能在世界历史中扮演一个开化文明的角色,应归功于这样一个事实:通过财富的创造,它将一部分人从耕犁下解放了出来。有热心者曾去体验农夫的生活,其中一人用一段值得人们注意的话描述了自己的感受。
“啊,劳动是这个世界的祸根,凡是参与其中的人,都会或多或少地变得野蛮。我将五个月的宝贵时间花费在喂养牛马上,这是一件值得称道的事吗?并非如此。”
Thus Nathaniel Hawthorne at Brook Farm. In the bitterness of his disillusion he went too far. Labour may be, and very often is, an accursed and a brutalizing thing, but assuredly it is not the curse of the world; nay, it is the world's supreme blessing. Hawthorne had committed a folly, and he paid for it in loss of mental balance. For him plainly it was no suitable task to feed cows and horses; yet many a man would perceive the nobler side of such occupation, for it signifies, of course, providing food for mankind. The interest of this quotation lies in the fact that, all unconsciously, so intelligent a man as Hawthorne had been reduced to the mental state of our agricultural labourers in revolt against the country life. Not only is his intellect in abeyance, but his emotions have ceased to be a true guide. The worst feature of the rustic mind in our day is not its ignorance or grossness, but its rebellious discontent. Like all other evils, this is seen to be an inevitable outcome of the condition of things; one understands it only too well. The bucolic wants to “better” himself. He is sick of feeding cows and horses; he imagines that on the pavement of London he would walk with a manlier tread.
There is no help in visions of Arcadia; yet it is plain fact that in days gone by the peasantry found life more than endurable, and yet were more intelligent than our clodhoppers who still hold by the plough. They had their folk-songs, now utterly forgotten.
这是纳撒尼尔・霍桑在布鲁克农场的体验。由于梦想幻灭的痛苦,他有些言过其实了。劳动可能是,也常常是一件令人憎恶的、会使人变得野蛮的事,但肯定不是世界的祸根;相反，,我们甚至可以说它是这个世界至高无上的福祉。霍桑做了一件蠢事,他为此丧失了精神上的平衡,这是他所付出的代价。坦白地说,喂养牛马的工作并不适合他;许多人都认识到了这种工作更高贵的一面一一当然,因为它意味着向人类供给食物。上面引用的这段话激起了许多人的兴趣,其原因在于这样一个事实:像罨桑这样的智者,也在完全没有意识到的情况下,陷人了那种农业劳动者厌恶乡村生活的精神状态。不但他的智力暂时失效,就连他的感情也不再是其正确的向导了。在我们这个时代，乡下人思想的最糟糕的特征,并非愚昧或粗俗,而是那种几近失控的不满情绪。像所有其他害处一样,看起来这是目前情形下事情的必然结果;我们太清楚这一点了。农民想要使自己的境遇“更好”,他不愿再喂养牛马,而是想象着可以昂首阔步地走在伦敦的街道上。
They had romances and fairy-lore, which their descendants could no more appreciate than an idyll of Theocritus. Ah, but let it be remembered that they had also a home, and this is the illumining word. If your peasant love the fields which give him bread, he will not think it hard to labour in them; his toil will no longer be as that of the beast, but upward-looking and touched with a light from other than the visible heavens. No use to blink the hard and dull features of rustic existence; let them rather be insisted upon, that those who own and derive profit from the land may be constant in human care for the lives which make it fruitful. Such care may perchance avail in some degree to counteract the restless tendency of the time; the dweller in a pleasant cottage is not so likely to wish to wander from it as he who shelters himself in a hovel. Well-meaning folk talk about reawakening love of the country by means of deliberate instruction. Lies any hope that way? Does it seem to promise a return of the time when the old English names of all our flowers were common on rustic lips -by which, indeed, they were first uttered? The fact that flowers and birds are well-nigh forgotten, together with the songs and the elves, shows how advanced is the process of rural degeneration. Most likely it is foolishness to hope for the revival of any bygone social virtuc. The husbandman of the future will be, I dare say, a well-paid mechanic of the engine-driver species; as he goes about his work he will sing the last refrain of the music-hall, and his oft-recurring holidays will be spent in the nearest great town. For him, I fancy, there will be little attraction in ever such melodious talk about "common objects of the country." Flowers, perhaps, at all events those of tilth and pasture, will have been all but improved away. And, as likely as not, the word home will have only a special significance, indicating the common abode of retired labourers who are drawing old-age pensions.
在阿卡狄亚的幻象中,人们无法获得任何帮助;但明显的事实是:过去的农夫不仅觉得生活远非煎熬度日，而且他们比现今那些仍然荷锄种田的庄稼汉更有智慧。他们有自己的民歌,而今已没有人记得;他们有浪漫传说与神话故事,但他们的子孙后代却只能欣赏忒奥克里托斯的田园诗。啊,我们也应记住,他们同时也有一个家,这是一个富有启迪性的字眼。如果农夫对给他面包的土地心怀爱意,他就不会认为在其间劳作是一件辛苦的事,他的劳作也将不再如牲口一般,而是积极向上的,并被赋予前所未见的来自天空的光彩。对乡村生活辛苦与枯燥的一面视而不见是徒劳无益的,而是应该坚持这样的看法:要让那些拥有土地并从中获利的人,因其丰足的生活,而常常受到人们的关注。有时,这种关注在某种程度上可以阻挡躁动不安的时代潮流。住在环境令人愉快的农舍中的人,不会像栖身于小窝棚中的人那样希望离家去流浪。用思虑周全的引导重新唤起人们对乡村的热爱,这是善意的人们经常说起的话题。然而,这样做有成功希望吗?那个农夫们经常念叨着所有花卉的古旧英文名称的时代还会回来吗?正是他们最先叫出这些花的名字的呀!但如今,花朵和鸟儿全部被遗忘了，,歌曲和精灵也从人们的记忆中消失一这一事实表明乡村的衰退已经到了怎样的地步!希望所有逝去的社会美德都能复苏,这是怎样的痴人说梦啊!我敢说,在以后的时代,农夫都将使用机械耕作,是高收人的机械师;他们在工作的时候,会哼唱着音乐厅里流行的调子;而且,他们会经常到附近的大城市里去度假。我想,对他们来说,曾经非常悦耳动听的关于“一般乡村事物”的话题,也不会有什么吸引力了。或许花草,至少是田间牧场上的花草,都会被改良吧。到那时,“家”这个字眼很可能会只具有一种特殊的含义，那就是指领取养老金的退休劳动者们的共同居所。
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