我所看見的世界
阿爾伯特‧愛因斯坦
我們這些總有一死的人的命運多麼奇特！我們每個人在這個世界上都只作一個短暫的逗留；目的何在，卻無從知道，儘管有時自以為對此若有所感。但是，不必深思，只要從日常生活就可以明白：人是為別人而生存的——首先是為那樣一些人，我們的幸福全部依賴於他們的喜悅和健康；其次是為許多我們所不認識的人，他們的命運通過同情的紐帶同我們密切結合在一起。我每天上百次的提醒自己：我的精神生活和物質生活都是以別人（包括生者和死者）的勞動為基礎的，我必須盡力以同樣的分量來報償我所領受了的和至今還在領受著的東西。我強烈地向往著儉樸的生活。並且時常發覺自己佔用了同胞的過多勞動而難以忍受。我認為階級的區分是不合理的，它最後所憑借的是以暴力為根據。我也相信，簡單淳樸的生活，無論在身體上還是在精神上，對每個人都是有益的。
我完全不相信人類會有那種在哲學意義上的自由。每一個人的行為不僅受著外界的強制，而且要適應內在的必然。叔本華說：「人雖然能夠做他所想做的，但不能要他所想要的。」這句格言從我青年時代起就給了我真正的啟示；在我自己和別人的生活面臨困難的時候，它總是使我們得到安慰，並且是寬容的持續不斷的源泉。這種體會可以寬大為懷地減輕那種容易使人氣餒的責任感，也可以防止我們過於嚴肅地對待自己和別人；它導致一種特別給幽默以應有地位的人生觀。
要追究一個人自己或一切生物生存的意義或目的，從客觀的觀點看來，我總覺得是愚蠢可笑的。可是每個人都有一些理想，這些理想決定著他的努力和判斷的方向。就在這個意義上，我從來不把安逸和享樂看作生活目的本身——我把這種倫理基礎叫做豬欄的理想。照亮我的道路，是善、美和真。要是沒有志同道合者之間的親切感情，要不是全神貫注於客觀世界——那個在藝術和科學工作領域裡永遠達不到的對象，那麼在我看來，生活就會是空虛的。我總覺得，人們所努力追求的庸俗目標——財產、虛榮、奢侈的生活——都是可鄙的。
我有強烈的社會正義感和社會責任感，但我又明顯地缺乏與別人和社會直接接觸的要求，這兩者總是形成古怪的對照。我實在是一個「孤獨的旅客」，我未曾全心全意地屬於我的國家、我的家庭、我的朋友，甚至我最為接近的親人；在所有這些關係面前，我總是感覺到一定距離而且需要保持孤獨——而這種感受正與年俱增。人們會清楚地發覺，同別人的相互了解和協調一致是有限度的，但這不值得惋惜。無疑，這樣的人在某種程度上會失去他的天真無邪和無憂無慮的心境；但另一方面，他卻能夠在很大程度上不為別人的意見、習慣和判斷所左右，並且能夠避免那種把他的內心平衡建立在這樣一些不可靠的基礎之上的誘惑。
我的政治理想是民主政體。讓每一個人都作為個人而受到尊重，而不讓任何人成為被崇拜的偶像。我自己一直受到同代人的過分的讚揚和尊敬，這不是由於我自己的過錯，也不是由於我自己的功勞，而實在是一種命運的嘲弄。其原因大概在於人們有一種願望，想理解我以自已微薄的綿力，通過不斷的鬥爭所獲得的少數幾個觀念，而這種願望有很多人卻未能實現。我完全明白，一個組織要實現它的目的，就必須有一個人去思考，去指揮、並且全面擔負起責任來。但是被領導的人不應當受到強迫，他們必須能夠選擇自己的領袖。在我看來，強迫的專制制度很快就會腐化墮落。因為暴力所招引來的總是一些品德低劣的人，而且我相信，天才的暴君總是由無賴來繼承的，這是一條千古不易的規律。就是由於這個緣故，我總強烈地反對今天在意大利和俄國所見到的那種制度。像歐洲今天所存在的情況，已使得民主形式受到懷疑，這不能歸咎於民主原則本身，而是由於政府的不穩定和選舉制度中與個人無關的特徵。我相信美國在這方面已經找到了正確的道路。他們選出了一個任期足夠長的總統，他有充分的權力來真正履行他的職責。另一方面，在德國政治制度中，為我所看重的是它為救濟患病或貧困的人作出了可貴的廣泛的規定。在人生的豐富多彩的表演中，我覺得真正可貴的，不是政治上的國家，而是有創造性的、有感情的個人，是人格；只有個人才能創造出高尚的和卓越的東西，而群眾本身在思想上總是遲鈍的，在感覺上也總是遲鈍的。
講到這裡，我想起了群眾生活中最壞的一種表現，那就是使我厭惡的軍事制度。一個人能夠洋洋得意的隨著軍樂隊在四列縱隊裡行進，單憑這一點就足以使我對他鄙夷不屑。他所以長了一個大腦，只是出於誤會；光是骨髓就可滿足他的全部需要了。文明的這種罪惡的淵藪，應當盡快加以消滅。任人支配的英雄主義、冷酷無情的暴行，以及在愛國主義名義下的一切可惡的胡鬧，所有這些都使我深惡痛絕！在我看來，戰爭是多麼卑鄙、下流！我寧願被千刀萬剮，也不願參與這種可憎的勾當。儘管如此，我對人類的評價還是十分高的，我相信，要是人民的健康感情沒有遭到那些通過學校和報紙而起作用的商業利益和政治利益的蓄意敗壞，那麼戰爭這個妖魔早就該絕跡了。
我們所能有的最美好的經驗是奧秘的經驗。它是堅守在真正藝術和真正科學發源地上的基本感情。誰要體驗不到它，誰要是不再有好奇心，也不再有驚訝的感覺，誰就無異於行屍走肉，他的眼睛便是模糊不清的。就是這樣奧秘的經驗——雖然摻雜著恐懼——產生了宗教。我們認識到有某種為我們所不能洞察的東西存在，感覺到那種只能以其最原始的形式接近我們的心靈的最深奧的理性和最燦爛的美——正是這種認識和這種情感構成了真正的宗教感情；在這個意義上，而且也只是在這個意義上，我才是一個具有深摯的宗教感情的人。我無法想像存在這樣一個上帝，它會對自己的創造物加以賞罰，會具有我們在自己身上所體驗到的那種意志。我不能也不願去想像一個人在肉體死亡以後還會繼續活著；讓那些脆弱的靈魂，由於恐懼或者由於可笑的唯我論，去拿這種思想當寶貝吧！我自己只求滿足於生命永恆的奧秘，滿足於覺察現存世界的神奇結構，窺見它的一鱗半爪，並且以誠摯的努力去領悟在自然界中顯示出來的那個理性的一部分，倘若真能如此，即使只領悟其極小的一部分，我也就心滿意足了。
http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/philosophy/Einstein.txt
The World as I see it
Albert Einstein
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men--in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.
In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place.
To inquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavours and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves--such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavour--property, outward success, luxury--have always seemed to me contemptible.
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude--a feeling which increases with the years. One is sharply conscious, yet without regret, of the limits to the possibility of mutual understanding and sympathy with one's fellow-creatures. Such a person no doubt loses something in the way of geniality and light-heartedness ; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to take his stand on such insecure foundations.
My political ideal is that of democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and respect from my fellows through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the one or two ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that it is necessary for the success of any complex undertaking that one man should do the thinking and directing and in general bear the responsibility. But the led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their leader. An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day. The thing that has brought discredit upon the prevailing form of democracy in Europe to-day is not to be laid to the door of the democratic idea as such, but to lack of stability on the part of the heads of governments and to the impersonal character of the electoral system. I believe that in this respect the United States of America have found the right way. They have a responsible President who is elected for a sufficiently long period and has sufficient powers to be really responsible. On the other hand, what I value in our political system is the more extensive provision that it makes for the individual in case of illness or need. The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does by the name of patriotism--how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
http://lib.ru/FILOSOF/EJNSHTEJN/theworld_engl.txt
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