林语堂用英语写出的旷世之作林语堂用英语写出的旷世之作 2008-04-16 16:51 生活的艺术（The Importance of Living）是林语堂用英语写出的旷世之作。林语堂在该书中将旷怀达 观， 陶情遣兴的中国人的生活方式，和浪漫高雅的东方情调予以充分的传达，向西方人娓娓道出了 一具可供仿效的“生活最高典型”的模式，以致有书评家称：“读完这书后，我真想跑到唐人街，一 遇到中国人，便向他行个鞠躬礼。” 摘自生活的艺术出版说明THE ENJOYMENT OF LIVINGOn Lying in BedBy Lin Yutang IT seems I am destined to become a market philosopher, but it cant be helped. Philosophy generally seems to be the science of making simple things difficult to understand, but I can conceive of a philosophy which is the science of making difficult things simple. In spite of names like “materialism“, “humanism“, “transcendentalism“, “:pluralism“, and all the other longwinded “isms“, I contend that these systems are no deeper than my own philosophy, Life after all is made up of eating and sleeping, of meeting and saying good-by to friends, of reunions and farewell parties, of tears and laughter, of having a haircut once in two weeks, of watering a potted flower and watching ones neighbor fall off his roof, and the dressing up of our notions concerning these simple phenomena of life in a kind of academic jargon is nothing but a trick to conceal either an extreme paucity or an extreme vagueness of ideas on the part of the university professors. Philosophy therefore has become a science by means of which we begin more and more to understand less and less about ourselves. What the philosophers have succeeded in is this: the more they talk about it, the more confused we become. It is amazing how few people are conscious of the importance of the art of lying in bed, although actually in my opinion nine-tenths of the worlds most important discoveries, both scientific and philosophical, are come upon when the scientist or philosopher is curled up in bed at two or five oclock in the morning. Some people lie in the daytime and others lie at night. Now by “lying“ I mean at the same time physical and moral lying, for the two happen to coincide. I find that those people who agree with me in believing in lying in bed as one of the greatest pleasures of life are the honest men, while those who do not believe in lying in bed are liars and actually lie a lot in the daytime, morally and physically. Those who lie in the daytime are the moral uplifters, kindergarten teachers and readers ofAesops Fables, while those who frankly admit with me that a man ought to consciously cultivate the art of lying in bed are the honest men who prefer to read stories without a moral like Alice in Wonderland. Now what is the significance of lying in bed, physically and spiritually? Physically, it means a retreat to oneself, shut up from the outside world, when one assumes the physical posture most conducive to rest and peace and contemplation. There is a certain proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist of life, “never lay straight“ in bed “like a corpse,“ but always curled up on one side. I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl up ones legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important, in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of ones head. In this posture any poet can write immortal poetry, any philosopher can revolutionize human thought, and any scientist can make epoch-making discoveries. THE ENJOYMENT OF NATUREParadise Lost?By Lin Yutang IT is a curious thing that among the myriad(a great and varied number) creations on this planet, while the entire plant life is deprived from taking any attitude toward Nature and practically all animals can also have no “attitude“ to speak of, there should be a creature called man who is both self-conscious and conscious of his surroundings and who can therefore take an attitude toward it. Mans intelligence begins to question the universe, to explore its secrets and to find out its meaning. There are both a scientific and a moral attitude toward the universe. The scientific man is interested in finding out the chemical composition of the inside and crust (a hard outer covering) of the earth upon which he lives, the thickness of the atmosphere surrounding it, the quantity and nature of cosmic rays dashing about on the top layers of the atmosphere, the formation of its hills and rocks, and the law governing life in general. This scientific interest has a relationship to the moral attitude, but in itself it is a pure desire to know and to explore. The moral attitude, on the other hand, varies a great deal, being sometimes one of harmony with nature, sometimes one of conquest and subjugation, or one of control and utilization, and sometimes one of supercilious(thinking that others are of less important) contempt. This last attitude of supercilious contempt toward our own planet is a very curious product of civilization and of certain religions