缴枪不杀HOW TO GROW OLD罗素

2021年1月20日发(作者：奠基人)
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HOW TO GROW OLD


By Bertrand Russell

罗素（
1872-1970
）
，是一个活了
99
岁的哲学家。然而，他最大的魅
力却不是哲学，
而是文学 。
曾经获得诺贝尔文学奖
——
文学中最高奖
项的他，
用自己的朴实优 美的语言为你讲述怎样才能度过一个成功的
晚年。

1. In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old,
which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first
advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both
my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards
my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off
in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other
three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors
I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died
of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.
2.
A great grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived
to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all
her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine
children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many
miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow, devoted herself to
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woman’s higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton
College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to
women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly
gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his
melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two
grandchildren. “Good gracious”, she exclaimed, “I have
seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted
from one of them, I should have a di
smal existence!” “Madre
snaturale,” he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy
-two, I
prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some
difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from
midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that
she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think,
is proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen
interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will
have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the
number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable
brevity of you future.
3.
As regards health I have nothing useful to say since I have little
experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep
when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the
ground that it is good for health, though in actual fact the things I
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like doing are mostly wholesome.
4. Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in
old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not
do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in
sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be
directed to the future and to things about which there is something
to be
done. This is not always easy: one’s own past is gradually
increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions
used to be more vivid than they are, and one’s mind keener. If this
is true it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not
be true.
5. The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of
sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are grown up they
want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested
in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to
become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do
not mean that one should be without interest in them, but one’s
interest should be contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but
not unduly emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as
soon as their young can look after themselves, but human beings,
owing to the length of infancy, find this difficult.
6.
I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have
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strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in
this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this
sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised
without being oppressive. It is no use telling grown-up children not
to make mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and
because mistakes are an essential part of education. But if you are
one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests, you may
find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with
you children and grandchildren. In that case you must realize that
while you can still render them material services, such as making
them an allowance or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect
that they will enjoy your company.

7.
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the
young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have
reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel
bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things
that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys
and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do,
the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to
overcome it
–
so at least it seems to me
–
is to make your interests
gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the
ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the
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