酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

The Country Doctor-Part36_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
blame. In him I found all my consolation.



"At the age of thirty-four I might still hope to do my country noble

service. I determined to make a name for myself, a name so illustrious



that no one should remember the stain on the birth of my son. How many

noble thoughts I owe to him! How full a life I led in those days while



I was absorbed in planning out his future! I feel stifled," cried

Benassis. "All this happened eleven years ago, and yet to this day, I



cannot bear to think of that fatal year. . . . My child died, sir; I

lost him!"



The doctor was silent, and hid his face in his hands; when he was

somewhat calmer he raised his head again, and Genestas saw that his



eyes were full of tears.

"At first it seemed as if this thunderbolt had uprooted me," Benassis



resumed. "It was a blow from which I could only expect to recover

after I had been transplanted into a different soil from that of the



social world in which I lived. It was not till some time afterwards

that I saw the finger of God in my misfortunes, and later still that I



learned to submit to His will and to hearken to His voice. It was

impossible that resignation should come to me all at once. My



impetuous and fiery nature broke out in a final storm of rebellion.

"It was long before I brought myself to take the only step befitting a



Catholic; indeed, my thoughts ran on suicide. This succession of

misfortunes had contributed to develop melancholy feelings in me, and



I deliberately determined to take my own life. It seemed to me that it

was permissible to take leave of life when life was ebbing fast. There



was nothing unnatural, I thought about suicide. The ravages of mental

distress affected the soul of man in the same way that acute physical



anguish affected the body; and an intelligent being, suffering from a

moral malady, had surely a right to destroy himself, a right he shares



with the sheep, that, fallen a victim to the 'staggers,' beats its

head against a tree. Were the soul's diseases in truth more readily



cured than those of the body? I scarcely think so, to this day. Nor do

I know which is the more craven soul--he who hopes even when hope is



no longer possible, or he who despairs. Death is the natural

termination of a physicalmalady, and it seemed to me that suicide was



the final crisis in the sufferings of a mind diseased, for it was in

the power of the will to end them when reason showed that death was



preferable to life. So it is not the pistol, but a thought that puts

an end to our existence. Again, when fate may suddenly lay us low in



the midst of a happy life, can we be blamed for ourselves refusing to

bear a life of misery?



"But my reflections during that time of mourning turned on loftier

themes. The grandeur of pagan philosophy attracted me, and for a while



I became a convert. In my efforts to discover new rights for man, I

thought that with the aid of modern thought I could penetrate further



into the questions to which those old-world systems of philosophy had

furnished solutions.



"Epicurus permitted suicide. Was it not the natural outcome of his

system of ethics? The gratification of the senses was to be obtained



at any cost; and when this became impossible, the easiest and best

course was for the animate being to return to the repose of inanimate



nature. Happiness, or the hope of happiness, was the one end for which

man existed, for one who suffered, and who suffered without hope,



death ceased to be an evil, and became a good, and suicide became a

final act of wisdom. This act Epicurus neither blamed nor praised; he



was content to say as he poured a libation to Bacchus, 'As for death,

there is nothing in death to move our laughter or our tears.'



"With a loftier morality than that of the Epicureans, and a sterner

sense of man's duties, Zeno and the Stoic philosophers prescribed



suicide in certain cases to their followers. They reasoned thus: Man

differs from the brute in that he has the sovereign right to dispose



of his person; take away this power of life and death over himself and

he becomes the plaything of fate, the slave of other men. Rightly



understood, this power of life and death is a sufficient counterpoise

for all the ills of life; the same power when conferred upon another,



upon his fellow-man, leads to tyranny of every kind. Man has no power




文章总共2页
文章标签:翻译  译文  翻译文  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号