Unit 1 Apology of Socrates
Let us reflect and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things — either death is a state of nothingness and utter(完全的) unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.
Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days and nights, when compared with the others.
Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is a gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, my friends and judges, can be greater than this?
我们如果从另一角度来思考死亡，就会发觉有绝大理由相信死亡是件好事。死亡可能是以下两种情形其中之一：或者完全没有知觉的虚无状态，或是人们常说的一套，灵魂经历变化，由这个世界移居到另一个世界。
倘若你认为死后并无知觉，死亡犹如无梦相扰的安眠，那么死亡真是无可形容的得益了。如果某人要把安恬无梦的一夜跟一生中的其它日子相比，看有多少日子比这一夜更美妙愉快，我想他说不出有多少天。不要说平民，就是显赫的帝王也如此。
如果这就是死亡的本质，永恒不过是一夜。倘若死亡一如人们常说的那样，只是迁徙到另一个世界，那里寄居了所有死去的人，那么，我的诸位朋友，法官，还有什么事情比这样来得更美妙呢？
If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous(正直的) in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again.
I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own suffering with theirs.
Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and who is not.
What would not a man give, my judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition(远征); or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions; assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.
假若这游历者到达地下世界时，摆脱了尘世的审判官，却在这里碰见真淳正直的法官迈诺、拉达门塞斯、阿克斯、特立普托马斯，以及一生公正的诸神儿子，那么这历程就确实有意义了。如果可以跟俄耳甫斯、谬萨尤斯、赫西亚德、荷马相互交谈，谁不愿意舍弃一切？要是死亡真是这样，我愿意不断受死。
我很希望碰见帕拉默底斯、蒂拉蒙的儿子埃杰克斯以及受不公平审判而死的古代英雄，和他们一起与某人交谈。我相信互相比较我们所受的苦难会是件痛快的事情。
更重要的是，我可以像在这个世界时一样，在那个新世界里继续探求事物的真伪，我可以认清谁是真正的才智仁人，谁只是假装聪明。
法官们啊，谁不愿舍弃一切，以换取机会研究这远征特洛伊的领袖——奥德修斯、西昔法斯和无数其他的男男女女！他们交谈，向他们请教，将是何等快乐的事情！在那个世界里，绝不会有人仅仅因为发问而被处死！如果传说属实，住在那里的人除了比我们快乐之外，还能得到永生。
Wherefore, my judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.
Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, my friends, to punish them, and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are nothing - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better only God knows.
法官们啊，不必为死亡而感到丧气，要知道善良的人无论生前死后都不会遭恶果，他和家人不会为诸神抛弃。快要降临在我身上的结局非偶然发生。我清楚知道现在对我来说，死亡比在世更佳。我可以摆脱一切烦恼，因为未有神谕显现。为了同样的理由，我不怨恨起诉者或是将我判死罪的人，他们虽对我不怀善意，却未令我受害。不过，我可要稍稍责怪他们的不怀善意。
可是我仍然要请你们为我做一件事情。诸位朋友，我的几个儿子成年后，请为我教导他们。如果他们把财富或其它事物看得比品德重，请像我烦劝你们那样烦劝他们。如果他们自命不凡，那么，请像我谴责你们那样谴责他们，因为他们忽视了事物的本质，本属藐小而自命不凡。你们倘能这样做，我和我的儿子便会自你们手中得到公正。
离别的时刻到了，我们得各自上路——我走向死亡，你们继续活着。至于生与死孰优，只有神明方知。
Unit 3
The Three New Yorks
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured(充满) by locusts(蝗虫) each day and spat out(吐出) each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New Yorks high-strung(高度紧张的) disposition, its poetical deportment, and its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal(潮汐的) restlessness, natives give it solidarity(团结) and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
Whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum(贫民窟), or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity(侮辱) of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript(手稿) in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces(拥抱) New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.
大致说来，有三个纽约。首先是那些土生土长的男男女女的纽约，他们对这座城市习以为常，认为它有这样的规模和喧嚣，乃是自然而然、不可避免的。其次是家住郊区、乘公交车到市内上班的人们的纽约——这座城市每到白天就被如蝗的人群吞噬进去，每到晚上又给吐出来。第三是外来人的纽约，他们生于他乡，到纽约来寻求机缘。在这三座充满骚动的城市中，最了不起的是最后一座——那座被视为最终归宿的城市，视为追寻目标的城市。正是由于这第三座城市，纽约才有了紧张的特性、诗人的气质、对艺术的执着追求和无与伦比的成就。上班族给纽约带来了潮汐般时涨时落的骚动，当地人保证了纽约的稳固和持续发展，而外来人则赋予纽约以激情。
无论是从意大利来到贫民窟开小杂货店的农夫，还是从密西西比州某小镇跑出来躲避邻居的淫秽目光的年轻姑娘，还是从玉米地带满怀酸楚地拎着手稿跑来的小伙子，情况都没有什么两样：每个人都怀着初恋的激情拥抱纽约，每个人都以冒险家的新奇目光审视纽约，每个人散发出的光和热，足以令爱迪生联合电气公司相形见绌。
The commuter is the queerest bird of all. The suburb he inhabits(居住) has no essential vitality(活力) of its own and is a mere roost(栖木) where he comes at day’s end to go to sleep. Except in rare cases, the man who lives in Mamaroneck or Little Neck or Teaneck, and works in New York, discovers nothing much about the city except the time of arrival and departure of train and buses, and the path to a quick lunch. He is desk-bound, and has never, idly(空闲地) roaming(漫步) in the gloaming(黄昏), stumbled suddenly on Belvedere Tower in the park, seen the ramparts(壁垒) rise sheer from the water of the pond, and the boys along the shore fishing for minnows, girls stretched out negligently(疏忽地) on the shelves of the rocks; he has never come suddenly on anything at all in New York as a loiterer(混日子的人), because he had no time between trains. He has fished in Manhattan’s wallet and dug out coins, but has
never listened to Manhattan’s breathing, never awakened to its morning, never dropped off to sleep in its night.
上班族是天下最怪异的人。他们居住的郊区没有自身的勃勃生机，仅仅是他们晚上回来睡觉的栖息所。那些住在马马罗内克、利特尔内克、蒂内克，到纽约上班的人，除个别情况外，对这座城市了无所知，只晓得火车汽车到站离站的时间、去快餐店的路径。这些人整日伏案工作，从来没有闲暇徜徉在暮色之中，意外地走到公园里的观景塔跟前，瞧见湖中突兀而起的防护堤，沿着湖边钓米诺鱼的男孩，大大咧咧地舒展着身子躺在石台上的女孩。他们从未在纽约游游逛逛偶然遇见什么，因为他们从下火车到再上火车，这中间是没有闲工夫的。他们把手伸到曼哈顿的钱包里捞钱，抓到几个微不足道的小钱，但却从未聆听过曼哈顿的鼻息，从未在醒来时见到曼哈顿的早晨，也从未在曼哈顿的夜幕中入睡过。
About 400,000 men and women come charging onto to the Island each week-day morning, out of the mouths of tubes and tunnels. Not many among them have ever spent a drowsy(昏昏欲睡的) afternoon in the great rustling(瑟瑟声) oaken(橡木制的) silence of the reading room of the Public Library, with the book elevator (like an old water wheel) spewing out(涌出) books onto the trays(托盘). They tend their furnaces(炉子) in Westchester and in Jersey, but have never seen the furnaces of the Bowery, the fires that burn in oil drums on zero winter nights. They may work in the financial district downtown and never see the extravagant(奢侈的) plantings of Rockefeller Center—the daffodils(水仙花) and grape hyacinths(麝香兰) and birches(桦树) of the flags trimmed to the wind on the fine morning in spring. Or they may work in a midtown office and may let a whole year swing round without sighting Governor’s Island from the sea wall. The commuter dies with tremendous mileage to his credit, but he is no rover(流浪者). His entrances and exits are more devious(弯曲的) than those in a prairie-dog village; and he calmly plays bridge while his train is buried in the mud at the bottom of the East River. The Long Island Rail Road alone carried forty million commuters last year; but many of them were the same fellow retracing his steps.
每个工作日的早晨，大约有40万男男女女走出地道口、隧道口，涌上曼哈顿岛。他们之中没有多少人跑到公共图书馆沉寂得只能听到沙沙声的阅览室，懒洋洋地度过一个下午，看着图书传送机像旧水轮一样，将书吐在书盘里。他们在韦斯特切斯特和泽西烧火炉，却从未见过鲍厄里街在气温降至零度的冬夜用油桶烧火取暖。他们可能在市中心的金融区工作，却从未见过洛克菲勒中心那枝繁叶茂的花木—春光明媚的早晨，黄水仙、风信子和莺尾花，齐崭崭地迎风摇曳。他们的办公地点可能位于商业区和居住区之间，可是一年到头也没从海堤上眺望过加弗纳斯岛。上班族一生中有着惊人的行程，但是从未东游西逛过。他们进进出出的地方比草原犬鼠的地洞群还要曲曲弯弯。即使火车陷进东河底的淤泥中，他们也会若无其事地只管打桥牌。去年，仅长岛铁路就运载了4千万上班族，只不过许多人是反反复复往返乘车罢了。