【赫临译笔】微尘与栋梁 - 心云驛站

很奇怪,我们自己冒犯别人与别人对我们的冒犯相比，竟然显得不那么十恶不赦。我想原因是我们了解导致自己冒犯别人的状况，所以原谅自己易，原谅别人难。我们视无不见自己的缺陷，当遇到特殊情况不得不正视自己的缺陷时，又发现很容易宽恕自己身上的这些缺陷。我们这样做是正确的，因为缺陷是我们自身的一部分，我们必须完整地接受自己，包括自己的好与坏。

但当我们评价别人时，就不是由真实的自我而是由一个自我形象去评价，在这个形象中，我们过滤掉了一切在世人眼中冒犯自己或让自己丢脸的事情。举一小小事例来说明，当我们发现别人撒谎时，是多么轻蔑？但谁敢说自己一辈子没撒过谎，恐怕不止撒过一百次谎呢？

人和人之间没有多少不同。他们都是一个大杂烩，身上既有伟大也有渺小，既有美德也有邪恶，既有高尚行为也有卑劣行径。一些人性格更坚强，机会更多，因此他们的天性可能朝着这样或那样的方向发挥得更淋漓尽致，但骨子里人都一样。就说我吧，和众人相比，我觉得自己既好不了多少，也差不了多少，但我知道如果记下自己一生中每一个行为和掠过头脑的每一个想法的话，世人会把我看成一个堕落的魔鬼。这些白日梦对所有人都很普通，知道这一点会使我们产生宽恕之心，既要恕己又要恕人。如果这能使我们用幽默的眼光去看待自己的同仁，哪怕是那些非常杰出值得尊敬的人，并且不把自己太当回事，这是非常明智的。

It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than the offenses of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them, find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.

But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has never told not one, but a hundred?

There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same. For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind, the world would consider me a monster of depravity.
The knowledge that these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others. It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.