古大叔小木屋（38）自录版

2021年7月6日《古大叔小木屋》现场直播实况录制 晚9:00——10:00 英语文本 Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay[nei], it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust[rəuˈbʌst] poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant[kænt] of this. The last were not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists. I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick/ serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks [kwæks]. I want the flower and fruit[fruːt] of a man; that some fragrance be wafted[wɑːftid] over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory[ˈtrænsitəri] act, but a constant superfluity[ˌsjuːpəˈfluiti], which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion [kənˈteidʒən]. From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? If anything ail [eil] a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even - for that is the seat of sympathy - he forthwith sets about reforming - the world. Being a microcosm[ˈmaikrəukɔzəm]himself, he discovers - and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it - that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic[ˈdræstik] philanthropy seeks out the Esquimaux [eskwɪ'mɔːz] and the Patagonian[ˌpætəˈɡəʊnɪən], and embraces the populous [ˈpɔpjuləs] Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia[ˌdisˈpepsiə], the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity [iˈnɔːmiti] greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.