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  • One of the things that separates confident from diffident people is their approach to history.

    使人們自信的其中一個原因,來自他們對於歷史的看法。

  • Broadly-speaking, the unconfident believe that history is over; the confident trust that it's still in the process of being madeone day possibly by themselves.

    廣泛地說,不自信的人,相信歷史已是過去式;自信的人,相信歷史還是現在進行式,或許有一天他們自己能創造歷史。

  • The way we enter the world carries with it an inherent bias towards an impression that change has finished, and history has been settled.

    在這個世界中,我們生來夾帶偏見,像是改變已經停止,歷史已經落定。

  • Everything around us conspires to give off a sense that the status quo is entrenched.

    周遭的一切都會讓我們有一種,現狀不會再改變的感覺。

  • We're surrounded by big people who follow traditions that have been in place for decades, perhaps centuries.

    我們周遭總是有一些大人物,他們遵循著已經存在數十年甚至數百年的傳統。

  • The house we live in appears as immutable as an ancient temple.

    我們居住的房子,似乎如同古代廟宇般永遠不會變。

  • The school we go to looks as though it has been performing the same rituals since the earth began.

    我們去的學校,自從地球生成以來,彷彿永遠照著一樣的形式在走。

  • We're constantly told why things are the way they are and encouraged to accept that reality is not made according to our wishes.

    我們總是在被教導,為什麼事物總是以某些方式存在,被誘導接受現實,並不是按照我們期待的發生。

  • We come to trust that human beings have fully mapped the range of the possible.

    我們相信人類的存在已經到達最大可能性的邊緣。

  • If something hasn’t happened, it’s either because it can’t happenor it shouldn’t.

    如果有些事沒有發生,一定是因為它不會發生或它不能發生。

  • The result can be a deep wariness around imagining changing the world.

    結果就是扼殺了能改變世界的想像。

  • There's no point starting a new business.

    沒有理由開創一個新的事業。

  • (the market must be full already)

    (因為市場一定已經滿了)

  • Pioneering a new approach to the arts.

    不需要開創新的藝術手法。

  • (everything is already set in a fixed pattern)

    (因為所有東西已經有固定形式了)

  • Or giving loyalty to a new idea.

    也不需要坦承任何新的想法。

  • (it either exists or is mad).

    (因為那不是已經存在不然就是太瘋狂)

  • When we study history in a certain way, however, the picture changes sharply.

    但當我們改變讀歷史的角度,整個情況會全盤改變。

  • Once time is speeded up and we climb up a mountain of minutes, and survey centuries, change appears constant.

    當時間被加快,我們幾分鐘就能爬一座山,調查跨越數個世紀,就會發現改變一直都存在。

  • New continents are discovered, alternative ways of governing nations are pioneered, ideas of how to dress and whom to worship are transformed.

    發現新大陸,開創了許多不同管理國家的方法,如何穿衣和信奉誰一直都在改變著。

  • Once people wore strange cloaks and tilled the land with clumsy instruments.

    曾經,人們穿著奇怪的斗篷,用著簡陋的工具耕田。

  • A long time ago, they chopped the king’s head off.

    很久以前,他們砍下國王的頭。

  • Way back, people got around in fragile ships, ate the eyeballs of sheep, used chamber pots and didn’t know how to fix teeth.

    更早以前,人們用破舊的船當作交通工具,吃著綿羊的眼球,用著便壺,不知道怎麼修理牙齒。

  • We come away from all this, knowing at least in theory, that things do change.

    這些,至少在歷史中都有提到,都代表著歷史會改變。

  • But in practicealmost without noticingwe tend to distance ourselves and our own societies from a day-to-day belief that we belong to the same ongoing turbulent narrative and are, at present, its central actors.

    但現實中,幾乎查無所覺,我們傾向將自身和所處社會遠離一般的認知,不認為自己屬於同樣吵鬧的敘述者,取而代之,現在,我們是主角。

  • History, we feel, is what used to happen; it can’t really be what is happening around us in the here and now.

    歷史,我們認為,是以前發生的事,無法真的代表目前在我們周圍發生的事物。

  • Things havein our vicinity at leastsettled down.

    事物,至少在我們周圍,已經塵埃落定。

  • To make us braver about the idea of changing things today, we might turn to some striking lines in T. S. Eliot’s cycle of poemsThe Four Quartets.

    讓我們擁有能改變事物的勇氣,能尋求一些T·S·艾略特的「四個四重奏」裡的一些字句。

  • So, while the light fails, on a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel, History is now and England.

    所以,當一個冬天的下午,天色漸漸暗淡的時候,在一座僻靜的教堂裡,歷史就是現在和英格蘭。

  • Winter afternoons, around 4pm, have a habit of feeling particularly resolved and established, especially in quiet English country chapels, many of which date back to the middle ages.

    冬季的午後,大約四點,有一點想要解決問題和建立起些什麼的心情,特別是在安寧的英式鄉村教堂,其中許多屬於中世紀時期。

  • The air in such chapels is still and musty.

    教堂裡的空氣凝滯又帶有霉味。

  • The heavy stone floors have been slowly worn away by the feet of the faithful.

    沉重的石階梯逐漸在信者的腳步中被侵蝕。

  • These are not places and times to think about changing the world.

    此時此地,沒有所謂改變世界的想法。

  • Everything hints that we would be wiser to accept the way things are.

    每一件事物都在告訴我們應該接受它們原有的樣子。

  • Walk back home across the fields, light a fire and settle down for quiet evening.

    穿越廣場走回家,點盞燈,在寧靜的夜晚中歇息。

  • Hence the surprise of Eliot’s third line, his resonant: ‘History is now and England.’

    令人驚訝之處,艾略特的第三行詩,他說到:「歷史就是此時此刻與英格蘭」。

  • In other words, everything that we associate with historythe impetuous daring of great people, the dramatic alterations in values, the revolutionary questioning of long-held beliefs, the upturning of the old order.

    換句話說,任何我們與歷史連結的事物—偉人們的勇敢的膽量,價值觀中戲劇性的改變,變革式的質疑原有信念,舊秩序的顛覆。

  • All this is still going on.

    這些都還在進行中。

  • even at this very moment, in outwardly peaceful, apparently unchanging places like the countryside near Shamley Green, in Surrey, where Eliot wrote his poem.

    甚至此時此刻,表面上平靜,看似沒有改變的地方,像是靠近薩里的珊里葛林鄉村,艾略特寫下這首詩的地方。

  • We don’t see it only because we are standing far too close.

    我們看不到,有可能是因為我們站得太近。

  • The world is being made and remade at every instant.

    每一個瞬間,世界都在被創造或再造。

  • And therefore any one of us has a theoretical chance of being an agent in history, on a big or small scale.

    因此,我們每一個人,理論上都有機會成為歷史的一部分,只是或大或小的概念。

  • It is open to our own times to build a new city every bit as beautiful as Venice, to change ideas as radically as the Renaissance, to start an intellectual movement as resounding as Buddhism.

    我們的時代,可以開創一個新的城市,如同維納斯般美麗,實施如同在文藝復興時顛覆性的改變,執行一些如佛教般有智慧並有見地的行動。

  • The present has all the contingency of the pastand is every bit as malleable.

    現在是過去所有偶發事件的結果,而且每一個部分都是可以再被發展的。

  • It shouldn't intimidate us.

    我們不該被嚇阻。

  • How we love, travel, approach the arts, govern, educate ourselves, run businesses, age and die are all up for further development.

    我們如何愛、旅行、藝術方式、統治、教育、商務、老化和死亡全部取決於後續的發展。

  • Current views may appear firm, but only because we exaggerate their fixity.

    目前的觀念會逐漸穩定,但可能也只是因為我們太過著重於它的不變。

  • The majority of what exists is arbitrary, neither inevitable nor right, simply the result of muddle and happenstance.

    大多數的武斷,既不是不可避免也不是完全正確,僅僅只是不夠清楚和偶然發生的事件。

  • We should be confident, even at sunset on winter afternoons, of our power to join the stream of history.

    甚至在冬日傍晚的日落時,我們都應該要有自信,是有力量投入歷史洪流中。

  • And, however modestly, change its course.

    然後,適時地,改變原有的循環。

One of the things that separates confident from diffident people is their approach to history.

使人們自信的其中一個原因,來自他們對於歷史的看法。

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