我们这些终有一死之人的命运是多么奇特啊！在这个世上，每个人都是匆匆过客；目的何在，他并不知晓，尽管有时自认为感觉得到。但不必深思，从日常生活就可以知道，人是为他人而活着的——首先是为这样一些人，我们的幸福完全依赖于他们的快乐与健康；还为许多素不相识之人，同情的纽带将其命运与我们紧密相连。我每天无数次地提醒自己：我的精神生活和物质生活都依赖于他人的劳动，无论他们去世还是健在，我必须尽力以同等程度回报我已经领受和正在领受的东西。我强烈向往俭朴的生活，并时常为发觉自己占用了同胞们过多的劳动而心情沉重。我认为阶级的区分是不合理的，它最终以暴力为根据。我也相信，无论在身体上还是精神上，简单纯朴的生活对每个人都是有益的。

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people—first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labor of my fellow-men. I regard class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force. I also believe that a simple and unassuming life is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

　　我完全不相信人会有哲学意义上的自由。每一个人的行为不仅受到外界的强迫，还要符合内在的必然。叔本华说：“人能做其所意愿，但不能意愿其所意愿。”从青年时代起，这句话就一直激励着我；当我面对生活的困境时，它总能给我慰藉，并且永远是宽容的源泉。这种认识可以减轻那种容易使人气馁的责任感，防止我们太过严肃地对待自己和他人，而且有助于建立一种幽默在其中有着特殊地位的人生观。

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying, “A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants,” has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing well-spring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people all too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in particular, gives humor its due.

　　客观地讲，要探究一个人自身或所有生物存在的意义或目的，我总觉得是荒唐可笑的。不过，每个人都有一些理想作为他努力和判断的指南。在这个意义上，我从不把安逸和享乐看成目的本身(我把这种伦理基础称为猪栏的理想)。照亮我道路的理想是善、美和真，它们不断给我以新的勇气去愉快地面对生活。倘若没有对志同道合者的亲切感，倘若不是全神贯注于客观世界，那个在艺术和科学研究领域永远达不到的对象，在我看来生活便是空虚的。人们努力追求的庸俗目标——财产、虚名、奢侈——我总觉得是可鄙的。

To inquire after the meaning or object of one’s own existence or that of all creatures has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—this ethical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed to me empty. The trite objects of human efforts—possessions, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me contemptible.

　　对于社会正义和社会责任，我有着强烈的感受，但对于直接接触他人和社会，我又表现出明显的淡漠，二者之间总是形成古怪的对照。我实在是一个“孤独的过客”，从未全心全意地属于我的国家、我的家庭、我的朋友，甚至是我的直系亲人；在所有这些关系面前，我从未失去一种疏离感和保持孤独的需要，而且这种感受正与日俱增。人会清楚地发觉，与别人的相互理解和协调一致是有限度的，但这并不足惜。这样的人无疑会失去一些天真无邪和无忧无虑，但也因此能在很大程度上不为别人的意见、习惯和判断所左右，并且不去尝试把他内心的平衡建立在这样一些不可靠的基础之上。

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a “lone traveler” and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude—feelings which increase with the years. One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, of the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people. No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations.

　　我的政治理想是民主。每个人都应当作为人而受到尊重，不要把任何人当作偶像来崇拜。我一直受到别人过分的赞扬和尊敬，这不是我的过错或功劳，而实在是命运的嘲弄。这大概源于许多人无法实现的一种愿望，他们想理解我以自己的绵薄之力通过不懈努力所获得的几个观念。我清楚地知道，一个组织要想实现它的目标，必须有一个人去思考、去指挥，并且全面担负起责任。但被领导的人绝不能受到强迫，他们必须能够选择自己的领袖。在我看来，强迫性的独裁专制很快就会腐化堕落，因为暴力总是会吸引来一些品德低劣之人。我相信，天才的暴君总是由恶棍来继承，这是一条亘古不变的规律。因此，我总是强烈反对当今意大利和俄国的那些制度。今天欧洲的民主形式之所以受到质疑，不能归咎于民主原则本身，而是由于政府缺乏稳定性以及选举制度中人性考虑不足所造成的。在这方面，我相信美国已经找到了正确的道路。他们选出的总统任期足够长，有充分的权力来真正履行职责。而在德国的政治制度中，我所看重的是，它为救助病人或贫困的人作了广泛规定。在丰富多彩的人类生活中，我认为真正可贵的不是政治上的国家，而是有创造性和情感的个人，是人格；只有个人才能创造出高贵和崇高的东西，而民众本身在思想和感觉上总是迟钝的。

My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that it is necessary for the achievement of the objective of an organization that one man should do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia today. The thing that has brought discredit upon the form of democracy as it exists in Europe today is not to be laid to the door of the democratic principle as such, but to the lack of stability of governments and to the impersonal character of the electoral system. I believe that in this respect the United States of America have found the right way. They have a President who is elected for a sufficiently long period and has sufficient powers really to exercise his responsibility. What I value, on the other hand, in the German political system is the more extensive provision that it makes for the individual in case of illness or need. The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

　　接着这个话题，我要谈谈民众生活中一种最坏的表现，那就是我所憎恶的军事制度。一个人能以随着军乐旋律在队列中行进为乐，单凭这一点就足以让我鄙视他。他长了大脑只是出于误会，单凭脊髓就足以满足他的需要了。文明的这个罪恶之源应当尽快铲除。由命令而产生的英雄主义，毫无意义的暴行，打着爱国主义的旗号所进行的一切令人作呕的胡闹，所有这些都令我深恶痛绝。在我看来，战争是多么邪恶、卑鄙！我宁愿被千刀万剐，也不愿参与这种可憎的勾当。无论如何，我对人类的评价还是很高的。我相信，若不是那些通过学校教育和报刊媒体而起作用的商业与政治利益系统地破坏了人们的健康感受，战争这个恶魔早就消失不见了。

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in fours to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I hate them! How vile and despicable seems war to me! I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.

　　我们所能拥有的最美好的体验是神秘体验。这种基本情感是真正的艺术与科学的策源地。谁要是不了解它，不再有好奇心和惊异感，谁就无异于行尸走肉，其视线是模糊不清的。正是这种对神秘的体验——即使夹杂着恐惧——产生了宗教。我们认识到有某种无法参透的东西存在着，感受到只能以最原始的形式为我们的心灵所把握的最深奥的理性和最灿烂的美——正是这种认识和这种情感构成了真正的宗教性；在这个意义上，也仅仅是在这个意义上，我才是一个笃信宗教的人。我无法想象神会对自己的造物加以赏罚，也无法想象他会有我们亲身体验到的那样一种意志。我不能也不愿去想象一个人在肉体死亡之后还会继续活着；让那些脆弱的灵魂，出于恐惧或者可笑的唯我论，去拿这些思想当宝贝吧！我满足于生命永恒的奥秘，满足于知晓和窥探现有世界的神奇结构，能以诚挚的努力去领悟显示于自然之中的那个理性的一部分，哪怕只是极小一部分，我也就心满意足了。

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

* 中文译文摘自： 阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦, 《我的世界观》(张卜天 译)，商务印书馆2018年8月出版

* 英文英文摘自：Einstein A. Ideas and Opinions (trans. Sonja Bargmann), New York: Three Rivers. 1954.