我们孙辈的经济问题

约翰·凯恩斯，1930年

John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)

Scanned from John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 1963, pp. 358-373.

I

We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the nineteenth century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down --at any rate in Great Britain; that a decline in prosperity is more likely than an improvement in the decade which lies ahead of us.

当下关于经济前景的悲观论调不绝于耳。我们常常听到人们说，19世纪典型的突飞猛进的经济发展已经成为过去，一度迅速提高的生活水平也开始放慢脚步——至少在英国如此。未来十年，经济繁荣将会消减而非高涨。

I believe that this is a wildly mistaken interpretation of what is happening to us. We are suffering, not from the rheumatics of old age, but from the growing-pains of over-rapid changes, from the painfulness of readjustment between one economic period and another. The increase of technical efficiency has been taking place faster than we can deal with the problem of labour absorption; the improvement in the standard of life has been a little too quick; the banking and monetary system of the world has been preventing the rate of interest from falling as fast as equilibrium requires. And even so, the waste and confusion which ensue relate to not more than 7½ per cent of the national income; we are muddling away one and sixpence in the £, and have only 18s. 6d., when we might, if we were more sensible, have £1 ; yet, nevertheless, the 18s. 6d. mounts up to as much as the £1 would have been five or six years ago. We forget that in 1929 the physical output of the industry of Great Britain was greater than ever before, and that the net surplus of our foreign balance available for new foreign investment, after paying for all our imports, was greater last year than that of any other country, being indeed 50 per cent greater than the corresponding surplus of the United States. Or again-if it is to be a matter of comparisons-suppose that we were to reduce our wages by a half, repudiate four fifths of the national debt, and hoard our surplus wealth in barren gold instead of lending it at 6 per cent or more, we should resemble the now much-envied France. But would it be an improvement?

我相信上述观点是对未来前景的错误解读。让我们深受困扰的，不是社会经济的老年风湿病，而是变动过快带来的成长烦恼，是跨越经济阶段带来的调节难题。技术进步促使效率提高，并造成难以解决劳动力过剩问题，生活水平的提高速度也有些过快。为了使经济回归均衡，全世界的银行和货币体系的利率下降已然过快。即便如此，上述摩擦造成的浪费和混乱对经济的损耗不会超过国民收入的7.5%，甚至经济增长还会弥补这些损耗。试想我们由于不够理智，挥霍浪费了1英镑中的1先令6便士，手上只余18先令6便士，但是现在的18先令6便士与五六年前的1英镑拥有相同购买力。我们过度悲观，以至于忘记英国1929年的工业产出刚刚创造了历史新高。即便扣除净进口额，我们的国际贸易和海外投资盈余也还是全球最高，比美国同期高出50%。再做一个极端假设，如果把我们的工资减半、拒付80%的国家债务、把全部财富变成黄金，而不是以6%的利率放贷，这就是我们现在希望效仿的法国，这真的是进步吗？

The prevailing world depression, the enormous anomaly of unemployment in a world full of wants, the disastrous mistakes we have made, blind us to what is going on under the surface to the true interpretation. of the trend of things. For I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong in our own time-the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.

我们被全球性的衰退、异常高的失业率以及自己犯下的灾难性错误蒙蔽了双眼，无法穿透表象正确解读当前趋势。我认为当前世界上喧哗鼓噪的两种互相对立的悲观主义言论都会被证明是错误的。一种是革命派的悲观主义，认为世事已经糟糕透顶，只有一场暴力变革才能拯救社会；另一种是保守派的悲观主义，认为当前的经济和社会生活已经快要失衡，不能再冒险做任何尝试。

My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?

本文的用意并不在于详细探讨当前或即将出现的情况，而在于摆脱短浅的目光去眺望遥远的未来。对于100年后的经济生活水平，我们可以作出什么合理预期？我们的子孙后代的经济前景是什么？

From the earliest times of which we have record-back, say, to two thousand years before Christ-down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was no very great change in the standard of life of the average man living in the civilised centres of the earth. Ups and downs certainly. Visitations of plague, famine, and war. Golden intervals. But no progressive, violent change. Some periods perhaps So per cent better than othersat the utmost 1 00 per cent better-in the four thousand years which ended (say) in A. D. 1700.

从公元前2000年到18世纪初期，在世界文明中心的普通人类生活水平小有起伏，但从无剧变。瘟疫、饥荒和战争时有发生，繁荣祥和期也穿插其间。18世纪以前的4000年间，某些时期的生活水平也许比别的时期要高，但不会超过100％。

This slow rate of progress, or lack of progress, was due to two reasons-to the remarkable absence of important technical improvements and to the failure of capital to accumulate.

上述缓慢乃至停滞的发展归于两点：一是缺乏重大的技术革新，二是未能进行资本积累。

The absence of important technical inventions between the prehistoric age and comparatively modern times is truly remarkable. Almost everything which really matters and which the world possessed at the commencement of the modern age was already known to man at the dawn of history. Language, fire, the same domestic animals which we have to-day, wheat, barley, the vine and the olive, the plough, the wheel, the oar, the sail, leather, linen and cloth, bricks and pots, gold and silver, copper, tin, and lead-and iron was added to the list before 1000 B.C.-banking, statecraft, mathematics, astronomy, and religion. There is no record of when we first possessed these things.

从史前到近现代时期，人类社会显然缺乏重大的技术革新。近代开端人们所拥有的那些真正至关重要的事物，几乎都在历史初期被人类掌握：语言、火、今日所见之家畜、小麦、大麦、葡萄和橄榄、耕犁、车轮、桨、帆、皮革、麻布和织物、砖瓦和罐壶、黄金和白银、铜、锡，铅银行学、治国术、数学、天文学和宗教。除了铁是公元前1000年前被发现的，我们甚至不能确知人类是从何时起掌握上述这些事物的。

At some epoch before the dawn of history perhaps even in one of the comfortable intervals before the last ice age-there must have been an era of progress and invention comparable to that in which we live to-day. But through the greater part of recorded history there was nothing of the kind.

史前的某个时期——也许是最近的一次冰河期之前的某个比较安乐的间歇期，一定曾经有过一个充满进步和创新的时代，足以与当前的进步创新相媲美。但是有史以来的大部分时期，从未出现类似的情形。

The modern age opened; I think, with the accumulation of capital which began in the sixteenth century. I believe-for reasons with which I must not encumber the present argument-that this was initially due to the rise of prices, and the profits to which that led, which resulted from the treasure of gold and silver which Spain brought from the New World into the Old. From that time until to-day the power of accumulation by compound interest, which seems to have been sleeping for many generations, was re-born and renewed its strength. And the power of compound interest over two hundred years is such as to stagger the imagination.

我认为始于16世纪的资本积累是现代的开端。我相信（此处不详述理由，以免喧宾夺主）最初是由于西班牙把黄金从新大陆带到旧大陆，从而引起物价上涨，并带动利润增长。从那时起，资本复利积累的力量彷佛从多年的沉睡中复苏觉醒。此后的200年间，复利的力量简直超乎想象。

Let me give in illustration of this a sum which I have worked out. The value of Great Britain’s foreign investments to-day is estimated at about £4,000,000,000. This yields us an income at the rate of about 6½ per cent. Half of this we bring home and enjoy; the other half, namely, 3¼ per cent, we leave to accumulate abroad at compound interest. Something of this sort has now been going on for about 250 years.

我以一个计算说明上述逻辑：目前，英国对外投资总额大约有40亿英镑，每年能产生大约6.5%的利息收入，其中半数带回国享用。另外3.25%的利息收入则继续留在国外按复利积累。上述复利投资已经持续大约250年。

For I trace the beginnings of British foreign investment to the treasure which Drake stole from Spain in 1580. In that year he returned to England bringing with him the prodigious spoils of the Golden Hind. Queen Elizabeth was a considerable shareholder in the syndicate which had financed the expedition. Out of her share she paid off the whole of England’s foreign debt, balanced her Budget, and found herself with about £40,000 in hand. This she invested in the Levant Company --which prospered. Out of the profits of the Levant Company, the East India Company was founded; and the profits of this great enterprise were the foundation of England’s subsequent foreign investment. Now it happens that £40,ooo accumulating at 3f per cent compound interest approximately corresponds to the actual volume of England’s foreign investments at various dates, and would actually amount to-day to the total of £4,000,000,000 which I have already quoted as being what our foreigninvestments now are. Thus, every £1 which Drake brought home in 1580 has now become £100,000. Such is the power of compound interest!

我认为英国对外投资的源头可追溯到1580年德雷克从西班牙盗窃的大批财宝，那一年他驾着金鹿号带着数量惊人的战利品回到英国。伊丽莎白女王是资助这次远征辛迪加的一个大股东。她用自己的收益清偿了英国的全部外债、平衡了预算，剩下的4万镑全部投入黎凡特公司，获利颇丰。黎凡特公司的利润造就了英国东印度公司，而后者的利润又为英国日后的对外投资奠定了基础。1580年的4万英镑以3.25%的复利计算，恰巧与英国在各个时期对外投资的实际总额相差无几，到今天总计应为40亿英镑，即前面引用的目前英国对外投资的总额。即1580年德雷克带回来的1英镑变成现在的10万英镑，复利的力量就是如此之大！

From the sixteenth century, with a cumulative crescendo after the eighteenth, the great age of science and technical inventions began, which since the beginning of the nineteenth century has been in full flood--coal, steam, electricity, petrol, steel, rubber, cotton, the chemical industries, automatic machinery and the methods of mass production, wireless, printing, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, and thousands of other things and men too famous and familiar to catalogue.

16世纪起，科学和技术发明的伟大时代开始了。18世纪后，这种发展势头日益强劲。19世纪初进入鼎盛时期：煤炭、蒸汽、电力、石油、钢铁、橡胶、棉花、化学工业、自动机械、大规模生产的方法，无线电、印刷术、牛顿、达尔文和爱因斯坦，还有其他家喻户晓的人和物，成千上万，不可胜数。

What is the result? In spite of an enormous growth in the population of the world, which it has been necessary to equip with houses and machines, the average standard of life in Europe and the United States has been raised, I think, about fourfold. The growth of capital has been on a scale which is far beyond a hundredfold of what any previous age had known. And from now on we need not expect so great an increase of population.

那么这一切带来了什么？尽管世界人口大量增长，并带来住房和机器设备的巨大需求，但是我认为，欧洲和美国的平均生活水平还是提高了将近4倍。资本的增量规模已经超过此前任何时代的百倍以上，而未来人口规模很可能不会再次出现这样大量的增长。

If capital increases, say, 2 per cent per annum, the capital equipment of the world will have increased by a half in twenty years, and seven and a half times in a hundred years. Think of this in terms of material things--houses, transport, and the like.

如果资本每年增长，比方说2％，那么世界的资产设备将在20年里增加50％，在100年里将增加7.5倍。我们可以从物质方面，比如说住房、运输之类，来想象这种前景。

At the same time technical improvements in manufacture and transport have been proceeding at a greater rate in the last ten years than ever before in history. In the United States factory output per head was 40 per cent greater in 1925 than in 1919. In Europe we are held back by temporary obstacles, but even so it is safe to say that technical efficiency is increasing by more than 1 per cent per annum compound. There is evidence that the revolutionary technical changes, which have so far chiefly affected industry, may soon be attacking agriculture. We may be on the eve of improvements in the efficiency of food production as great as those which have already taken place in mining, manufacture, and transport. In quite a few years-in our own lifetimes I mean-we may be able to perform all the operations of agriculture, mining, and manufacture with a quarter of the human effort to which we have been accustomed.

同时，近十年来，工业和运输方面的技术提高速度也是前所未有的。1925年，美国的人均工业产值比1919年提高了40％。欧洲的发展环境更恶劣，但即使如此，仍然可以肯定地说，技术效率的年增长率至少在1％以上。截至目前，革命性的技术革新主要发生在工业领域，但显然很快将冲击农业领域。到那时，矿业、工业和运输业所取得的巨大突破将会在农业领域重现，当前或许就是巨变的前夜。在我们有生之年，将能看到农业、矿业和工业的人工效率提高4倍。

For the moment the very rapidity of these changes is hurting us and bringing difficult problems to solve. Those countries are suffering relatively which are not in the vanguard of progress. We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come--namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.

目前，过快的变动速度带来不少新难题，即使不是处于变革前沿的国家也有类似困扰。一种新的疾病正在折磨着我们，某些读者也许还没听过它的名称，不过未来它将会响彻整个社会——这种病叫做“由技术进步而引致的失业”。此类失业的根源在于我们提高劳动力效率的速度远远超过我们为劳动力开辟新用途的速度。

But this is only a temporary phase of maladjustment. All this means in the long run that mankind is solving its economic problem. I would predict that the standard of life in progressive countries one hundred years hence will be between four and eight times as high as it is to-day. There would be nothing surprising in this even in the light of our present knowledge. It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of afar greater progress still.

但这只是暂时性的经济失调，从长远看，人类终将解决其经济问题。我敢预言，100年后进步国家的生活水平将比现在高4-8倍。即使是从现有的知识分析，这也是意料之中的，而且更乐观的估计也并非异想天开。

II

Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that a hundred years hence we are all of us, on the average, eight times better off in the economic sense than we are to-day. Assuredly there need be nothing here to surprise us.

为了便于讨论，我们设想100年后全体人类的经济境况平均要比现在好8倍。毫无疑问，这种提高速度并不足为奇。

Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes --those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs-a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.

现在可以肯定的是，人类的需求是永无止境的。不过需求可以分为两类——一类是绝对需求，即不管周围的其他人境况如何，我们都会感到这种需求的存在。另一类是相对需求，即只有当满足这种需求能够使我们凌驾于他人之上，产生优越感时，我们才会觉察到它的存在。第二类需求，即满足优越感的需求，也许才是真正不知餍足的。当普遍水平提高之后，这种需求也会水涨船高。但我们能很快满足绝对需求，也许比我们意识到的还要早。一旦意识到此类需求已经满足，我们就愿意把精力投入非经济目的。

Now for my conclusion, which you will find, I think, to become more and more startling to the imagination the longer you think about it.

现在谈谈我的结论。我认为越是深入思考这个结论，就越发为之惊诧。

I draw the conclusion that, assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not-if we look into the future-the permanent problem of the human race.

我的结论是，假定不发生大规模的战争，没有大规模的人口增长，那么经济问题可能在100年内被解决，或者至少是有望被解决。即，如果我们展望未来，经济问题并不是人类的永恒问题。

Why, you may ask, is this so startling? It is startling because-if, instead of looking into the future, we look into the past-we find that the economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race-not only of the human race, but of the whole of the biological kingdom from the beginnings of life in its most primitive forms.

你也许会问，这有何值得惊诧？这的确令人惊奇，因为若非眺望未来，而是回首过去，我们就会发现，迄今为止，经济问题，即生存竞争一直是人类首要的、最紧迫的问题——不仅是人类，整个生物界从生命的最原始形式开始莫不如此。

Thus we have been expressly evolved by nature-with all our impulses and deepest instincts-for the purpose of solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose.

显而易见，我们本质上是为了解决经济问题而进化发展的，所有的冲动和最深层的本能都是为之服务的。如果经济问题得以解决，那么人类将失去传统的生存目的。

Will this be a benefit? If one believes at all in the real values of life, the prospect at least opens up the possibility of benefit. Yet I think with dread of the readjustment of the habits and instincts of the ordinary man, bred into him for countless generations, which he may be asked to discard within a few decades.

这究竟是福是祸？如果你完全相信生命的真正价值，则这个远景至少展示了从中获益的可能性。不过，要在几十年内抛弃那些经过无数代培养，对于普通人来说已是根深蒂固的习惯和本能，确实让人细思极恐。

To use the language of to-day-must we not expect a general “nervous breakdown”? We already have a little experience of what I mean -a nervous breakdown of the sort which is already common enough in England and the United States amongst the wives of the well-to-do classes, unfortunate women, many of them, who have been deprived by their wealth of their traditional tasks and occupations--who cannot find it sufficiently amusing, when deprived of the spur of economic necessity, to cook and clean and mend, yet are quite unable to find anything more amusing. To those who sweat for their daily bread leisure is a longed--for sweet-until they get it.

换言之，这会不会引起普遍的“精神崩溃”呢？对此，我们已有些许体会：此类精神崩溃现象在英国和美国富裕阶层的家庭妇女中已是极为寻常。这些不幸的妇女大多被自己的财富剥夺了传统的任务和工作，她们丧失迫切经济需求的刺激，因此无法从烹调、洒扫和缝补这类活动中获得足够的快乐，而又难以找到更愉快的消遣。对那些迫于生计辛勤劳动的人来说，闲暇是一件令人向往的乐事。而当向往成为现实时，他们才发现原来是另一番滋味。

There is the traditional epitaph written for herself by the old charwoman:--

据说一位年老的打杂女工为自己写下这样一段墓志铭：

Don’t mourn for me, friends, don’t weep for me never,

For I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.

别为我悲伤，朋友们，别为我哭泣。

我什么也不用干了，将永远安息。

This was her heaven. Like others who look forward to leisure, she conceived how nice it would be to spend her time listening-in-for there was another couplet which occurred in her poem:-

这就是她的天堂。如同其他渴望闲暇的人一样，她想象要是让别人来歌唱，而她在一旁倾听。这样打发时光将是多么美妙，她的诗中还有这样两行：

With psalms and sweet music the heavens’ll be ringing,

But I shall have nothing to do with the singing.

天空中回荡着圣歌和甜美的音乐，

而我在一旁倾听，什么也不做。

Yet it will only be for those who have to do with the singing that life will be tolerable and how few of us can sing!

然而，只有对那些不得不歌唱的人来说，生活才是差强人意的——可我们中又有几人真正能放声歌唱呢？

Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.

因此，人类首次遇到真正的、永恒的问题是，摆脱压迫的经济束缚后，应该如何利用自由？科学和复利的力量将为他赢得闲暇，而他又该如何消磨光阴，更明智惬意地生活呢？

The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.

全心追逐利益的人也许会把大家带往经济丰裕的大道。但只有那些能够使生活的艺术永葆青春，并将之发扬光大，提升到更高境界、不会为了谋生而出卖自己的人才能真正享受丰裕闲暇。

Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional society. To judge from the behaviour and the achievements of the wealthy classes to-day in any quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing! For these are, so to speak, our advance guard-those who are spying out the promised land for the rest of us and pitching their camp there. For they have most of them failed disastrously, so it seems to me-those who have an independent income but no associations or duties or ties-to solve the problem which has been set them.

我认为任何国家或民族期待这种丰裕闲暇时，都必然满怀恐惧。毕竟长久以来，我们都是被训练去奋斗而不是去享受。对那些没有特殊才能来寄托身心的普通人来说，丰裕闲暇的年代极其可怕。当他再也不能从传统社会的温床和他所珍视的风俗习惯中找到立足根基时，这个问题会更加严重。当今世界各地的富裕阶层的作为及成就都表明，解决这个问题的前景非常黯淡。这些人可谓是先锋部队，为我们探寻乐土并在那里安营扎寨，其中绝大多数已遭到惨痛的失败。因此我认为，能够安然享受丰裕闲暇的，可能是拥有独立收入同时不受社会关系或职责约束的人。

I feel sure that with a little more experience we shall use the new-found bounty of nature quite differently from the way in which the rich use it to-day, and will map out for ourselves a plan of life quite otherwise than theirs.

我确信只要积累些许经验，我们就能超越今天的富人，学会在丰裕闲暇中更好地运用新的自然约束，并走出与他们不同的生活道路。

For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!

人类的原始习性如此根深蒂固，因此达到丰裕闲暇之后，若要生活得舒心畅意，那么人就得干一点工作。与现在的富人们相比，我们将为自己多做些事。如需承担微小的任务，或者料理日常琐事，我们将感到非常高兴。除此外，我们将努力把那些必须完成的工作广泛地分配给每个人。3小时一轮班或每周15小时的工作，也许能在很长一段时间内帮助人们适应丰裕闲暇的时代。因为对大多数人来说，每天工作3小时，足以使原始的劳作需求获得满足。

There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to come. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession -as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life -will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.

此外，我们必须预料到其他领域也会发生变化。当财富积累不再具有高度的社会重要性时，我们原先的道德准则会发生重大变化。我们将会摆脱200年来如恶梦般困扰着我们的虚伪的道德原则。在这些伪道德原则下，我们把人类品性中某些最令人厌恶的东西抬举为最高尚的美德。到那时，我们将敢于按照真实的价值评价金钱动机。占有金钱的欲望，如果不是为了享受生活、应对现实而追求金钱，那将被看作是可憎的病症，是半犯罪、半病态的性格倾向。人们不得不战战兢兢地把它交给精神病专家去处理。曾经那些影响财富分配和经济奖惩的各种社会习俗及经济惯例有利于促进资本积累，因此不论它们本身可能多么令人憎恶、有失公平，我们都得不惜一切代价维持下去。但到那时我们将获得解放，并终将摒弃它们。

Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealth-unless they can find some plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud and encourage them. For we shall inquire more curiously than is safe to-day into the true character of this “purposiveness” with which in varying degrees Nature has endowed almost all of us. For purposiveness means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment. The “purposive” man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into time. He does not love his cat, but his cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens’ kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom. For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam to-morrow and never jam to-day. Thus by pushing his jam always forward into the future, he strives to secure for his act of boiling it an immortality.

当然，到那时仍会有不少人怀着强烈的、贪得无厌的意图，盲目地追求财富，除非他们能够找到其它替代目标。不过，其余的人将不再有任何义务赞许或鼓励他们。每个人身上或多或少都带有这种自然赋予的意图，即我们更关心行动造成的远期后果，而非行动本身的性质或者当期的影响。但到那时，我们将能更加稳妥自如地细致探索这种意图的真正性质。那些“有意图”的人，总是努力把关注点推至最远，以确保行动具有虚妄的永恒性。他喜欢的并不是他的猫，而是他的猫所生的小猫。实际上，他喜欢的也不是小猫，而是小猫的小猫。这样无穷无尽地递推下去，最后他所追求的不过是抽象的“猫”的概念。对他来说，果酱并不是果酱，即果酱不是今天这听实实在在的果酱，而是想象中的明天的那听果酱。因此，他把果酱不断推向未来，竭力从自身行动中升华出一种永恒性。

Let me remind you of the Professor in Sylvie and Bruno :

让我们回忆一下《西尔维亚和布鲁诺》中的那位教授：

“Only the tailor, sir, with your little bill,” said a meek voce outside the door.

“Ah, well, I can soon settle his business,” the Professor said to the children, “if you’ll just wait a minute. How much is it, this year, my man?” The tailor had come in while he was speaking.

“Well, it’s been a-doubling so many years, you see,” the tailor replied, a little grufy, “and I think I’d like the money now. It’s two thousand pound, it is!”

“Oh, that’s nothing!” the Professor carelessly remarked, feeling in his pocket, as if he always carried at least that amount about with him. “But wouldn’t you like to wait just another year and make it four thousand? Just think how rich you’d be! Why, you might be a king, if you liked!”

“I don’t know as I’d care about being a king,” the man said thoughtfully. “But it dew sound a powerful sight o’ money! Well, I think I’ll wait-“

“Of course you will!” said the Professor. “There’s good sense in you, I see. Good-day to you, my man!”

“Will you ever have to pay him that four thousand pounds?” Sylvie asked as the door closed on the departing creditor.

“Never, my child!” the Professor replied emphatically. “He’ll go on doubling it till he dies. You see, it’s always worth while waiting another year to get twice as much money!”

门外的人低声下气地说：“是裁缝，先生，他来收账。”

“啊，我可以很快解决他的事情，”教授对他的孩子们说，“你们只需等一小会儿。今年的账是多少，我的朋友？”他正说着，裁缝已经走了进来。

“你晓得，这笔账是每年翻一番的，现在已经这么多年了，”裁缝有点生硬地回答道，“我现在就想拿到现钱。已经有2000英镑了！”

“喔，这不算什么！”教授满不在乎地说，一边在口袋里摸索着，彷佛他总是随身带着那样数目的一笔款子似的。“不过，如果你愿意的话，为什么不再等上一年，让它滚成4000英镑呢？想想看，那时你会多么富裕！要是你愿意，你简直可以成为一个‘国王’！”

“我不确定我是不是想成为国王，”裁缝若有所思地说，“不过这笔款子听起来的确数目不小！好吧，我看我还是等一等吧……”

“你当然会这么办的！”教授说，“我知道，你是个精明的人。再见，我的朋友！”

“你真的打算付给他4000英镑吗？”等那个债主离去，关上门以后，西尔维亚问。

“不可能，我的孩子！”教授毫不犹豫地回答，“他会让这笔钱一直滚下去，直到他死为止。你看，只要再等上一年，这笔钱就会变成现在的两倍，这件事总是值得去做的啊！”

Perhaps it is not an accident that the race which did most to bring the promise of immortality into the heart and essence of our religions has also done most for the principle of compound interest and particularly loves this most purposive of human institutions.

我们这个民族曾经不遗余力地让永生的允诺成为自己宗教的核心和本质，同时又最热衷于复利原则，对这种最有意图性的人类制度抱有特殊的眷恋之情，这一现象也许并非偶然。

I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue-that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.

因此，我认为丰裕闲暇能使我们重拾宗教和传统美德中最为确凿可靠的原则——例如贪婪是一种恶习，高利盘剥是一种罪行，热爱金钱是令人憎恶的。那些拥有美好德行和健全心智的人对未来的顾虑最少。我们将再次更看重目的而非手段，更看重事物的有益性而非有用性。我们将尊崇那些能够教导我们如何充实美好地度过光阴的人，这些人总是心情愉快，能够从事物中获得直接的乐趣，既不劳碌如牛马，也不虚度岁月，逍遥如仙。

But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

可是要注意！上述一切都发生在遥远的未来，至少还得等100年。现在我们必须自欺欺人地把美的说成丑的，丑的说成美的，因为丑的有用，而美的不能带来实惠。在相当长的时期内，我们仍得把贪婪、高利盘剥和预防筹备奉为神明，因为只有它们能带领我们离开经济必需的沼泽，走上康庄大道。

I look forward, therefore, in days not so very remote, to the greatest change which has ever occurred in the material environment of life for human beings in the aggregate. But, of course, it will all happen gradually, not as a catastrophe. Indeed, it has already begun. The course of affairs will simply be that there will be ever larger and larger classes and groups of people from whom problems of economic necessity have been practically removed. The critical difference will be realised when this condition has become so general that the nature of one’s duty to one’s neighbour is changed. For it will remain reasonable to be economically purposive for others after it has ceased to be reasonable for oneself.

因此，我盼望在不太遥远的将来，整个人类的物质生活条件能够发生前所未有的巨变。不过，这个巨变必将是渐进的，而非灾难性的骤变。实际上，这个巨变已经拉开序幕。在此进程中，越来越多阶层和集团的人们将摆脱经济必需的束缚。部分人摆脱经济意图时，其他人却仍可能把它看作理所当然。因此当上述变化成为普遍现象，并改变“邻人之爱”的性质后，我们就会认识到它带来的重大差异。

The pace at which we can reach our destination of economic bliss will be governed by four things-our power to control population, our determination to avoid wars and civil dissensions, our willingness to entrust to science the direction of those matters which are properly the concern of science, and the rate of accumulation as fixed by the margin between our production and our consumption; of which the last will easily look after itself, given the first three.

我们迈向上述经济乐土的速度，取决于以下四个因素——我们对人口的控制力，避免战争和内乱的决心，放手让科学去处理其分内之事的自觉意愿，以及生产和消费之差决定的积累速度。只要前三者不出问题，最后一点也就会迎刃而解。

Meanwhile there will be no harm in making mild preparations for our destiny, in encouraging, and experimenting in, the arts of life as well as the activities of purpose.

对未来做些简单的预防筹备并无害处。我们在鼓励和尝试生活艺术的同时，也没必要全盘放弃行动的目的性。

But, chiefly, do not let us overestimate the importance of the economic problem, or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater and more permanent significance. It should be a matter for specialists-like dentistry. If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!

但首要的一点是，我们不能高估经济问题的重要性，不能为假想的经济必需而牺牲其他更重大、更恒久的事情。经济问题应成为由专家处理的事务——就像牙病应由牙医处理一样。如果经济学家能够努力扮演平凡又称职的角色，就像牙医一样，那就再好不过了！