To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without-our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat.

将一切事物和事物的原则统统看作经常变化着的形态或风尚，日益成为近代思想界的趋势。让我们从表面的事情——我们的生理活动说起。譬如说，选取这么一个微妙的时刻，即在酷暑中猛然浸入滔滔清流的那一刹那和极其愉快的感觉。

What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibers, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them ---the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain under every ray of light and sound---processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces.

在那一刹那间的全部生理活动，难道不是具有科学名称的各种元素的一种化合作用吗?不过，这些元素，像磷、石灰、微细的纤维质，不仅存在于人体之中，而且在与人体毫不相干的地方也能检查出它们的存在。我们的生理活动——血液的流通，眼睛中水晶体的消耗和恢复，每一道光波、每一次声浪对于脑组织所引起的变异——都不外是这些元素的永久的运动，而科学把这些运动过程还原为更为简单和基本的力量的作用。

Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations.

正像我们身体所赖以构成的元素一样，这些力量在我们身体以外也同样发挥着作用——它可以使铁生锈，使谷物成熟。这些元素，在种种气流吹送之下，在我们身外向四面八方传播：人的诞生，人的姿态，人的死亡，以及在人的坟头上生长出紫罗兰——这不过是成千上万化合结果的点滴例子而己。

That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group theme design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. This at least of flame---like our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways.

人类那轮廓分明、长久不变的面颜和肢体，不过是一种表象，在它那框架之内，我们好把种种化合的元素凝聚一团——这好像是蛛网的纹样，那织网的细丝从网中穿出，又引向他方。在这一点上，我们的生命有些像那火焰——它也是种种力量会合的结果，这会合虽不断延续，那些力量却早晚要各自飘散。