Of Human Bondage 人性的枷锁 Chapter 53

Taking the paper with him Mr. Carey retired ¹ to his study. Philip changed his chair for that in which his uncle had been sitting (it was the only comfortable one in the room), and looked out of the window at the pouring rain. Even in that sad weather there was something restful about the green fields that stretched to the horizon. There was an intimate charm in the landscape which he did not remember ever to have noticed before. Two years in France had opened his eyes to the beauty of his own countryside., ,He thought with a smile of his uncle's remark. It was lucky that the turn of his mind tended to flippancy ². He had begun to realise what a great loss he had sustained in the death of his father and mother. That was one of the differences in his life which prevented him from seeing things in the same way as other people. The love of parents for their children is the only emotion which is quite disinterested ³. Among strangers he had grown up as best he could, but he had seldom been used with patience or forbearance. He prided himself on his self-control. It had been whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows. Then they called him cynical ⁴ and callous ⁵. He had acquired calmness of demeanour and under most circumstances an unruffled exterior ⁶, so that now he could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional; but he knew that he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindness touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his voice. He remembered the bitterness of his life at school, the humiliation ⁷ which he had endured, the banter ⁸ which had made him morbidly ⁹ afraid of making himself ridiculous; and he remembered the loneliness he had felt since, faced with the world, the disillusion ¹⁰ and the disappointment caused by the difference between what it promised to his active imagination and what it gave. But notwithstanding he was able to look at himself from the outside and smile with amusement., ,'By Jove, if I weren't flippant, I should hang myself,' he thought cheerfully., , ,'My dear fellow,' Cronshaw said, 'there's no such thing as abstract morality.', ,When Philip ceased to believe in Christianity he felt that a great weight was taken from his shoulders; casting off the responsibility which weighed down every action, when every action was infinitely ¹¹ important for the welfare of his immortal ¹² soul, he experienced a vivid sense of liberty. But he knew now that this was an illusion. When he put away the religion in which he had been brought up, he had kept unimpaired the morality which was part and parcel of it. He made up his mind therefore to think things out for himself. He determined ¹³ to be swayed by no prejudices. He swept away the virtues ¹⁴ and the vices ¹⁵, the established laws of good and evil, with the idea of finding out the rules of life for himself. He did not know whether rules were necessary at all. That was one of the things he wanted to discover. Clearly much that seemed valid ¹⁶ seemed so only because he had been taught it from his earliest youth. He had read a number of books, but they did not help him much, for they were based on the morality of Christianity; and even the writers who emphasised the fact that they did not believe in it were never satisfied till they had framed a system of ethics ¹⁷ in accordance with that of the Sermon on the Mount. It seemed hardly worth while to read a long volume in order to learn that you ought to behave exactly like everybody else. Philip wanted to find out how he ought to behave, and he thought he could prevent himself from being influenced by the opinions that surrounded him. But meanwhile he had to go on living, and, until he formed a theory of conduct, he made himself a provisional rule., ,Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好 。,His flippancy makes it difficult to have a decent conversation with him.他玩世不恭 ，很难正经地和他交谈
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