John Stuart Mill 彌爾 · J. S. Mill

🔊At fifteen he read Bentham, and the principle of utility, he said, gave unity to everything he knew: he now had a creed, a philosophy, a religion. At seventeen he was briefly arrested for handing out pamphlets on birth control in the poor streets of London, and in the same year he followed his father into the London office of the East India Company, where he would work for thirty-five years, drafting dispatches to India in the mornings and writing philosophy in the time left over.

十五歲時，他讀了邊沁；他說，效益原則為他所知的一切帶來了統一：他現在有了一個信條、一套哲學、一種宗教。十七歲時，他因為在倫敦的貧民街道散發節育傳單而短暫被捕；同一年，他跟著父親進了東印度公司的倫敦辦公室。他在那裡工作了三十五年，早上起草發往印度的公文，用剩下的時間寫哲學。

🔊In the autumn of 1826, when he was twenty, the machine stopped. “It occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: ‘Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?’ And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, ‘No!’ At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.” He had been trained to analyze and had never been taught to feel, and he now feared that the habit of analysis had worn his feelings away. For months he went through his work mechanically and told no one.

1826 年秋天，他二十歲，那台機器停了。「我想到要直接問自己這個問題：『假設你人生的一切目標都實現了；你所期盼的制度與輿論上的一切改變，就在這一刻全部達成：這對你會是莫大的喜悅與幸福嗎？』而一種壓抑不住的自我意識清清楚楚地回答：『不會！』聽到這裡，我的心往下一沉：我的人生賴以建造的整個地基垮了。」他被訓練成會分析，卻從來沒有人教他感受；而他現在害怕，分析的習慣已經把他的感情磨光了。有好幾個月，他機械地做完工作，沒有告訴任何人。

🔊The first relief came by accident. He was reading the memoirs of the French writer Marmontel and came to the passage describing the death of the author’s father, and he found himself in tears. He was not, then, “a stock or a stone.” Two years later he read Wordsworth, whose poems gave him what he called a culture of the feelings. He drew two lessons that shaped everything he later wrote. Happiness cannot be had by aiming at it: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.” And a good life needs the cultivation of the inner person as well as the reform of outward circumstances. He never renounced Bentham’s principle. He spent the rest of his life enlarging what it meant.

最初的紓解是意外來的。他正在讀法國作家馬蒙泰爾的回憶錄，讀到描寫作者父親去世的那一段，發現自己流下了眼淚。那麼，他並不是「一塊木頭或石頭」。兩年後，他讀了華茲華斯；那些詩給了他他所謂的「情感的陶冶」。他得出了兩個教訓，塑造了他後來寫的一切。幸福不能靠瞄準它而得到：「問問自己是否幸福，你就不再幸福了。」還有：美好的人生既需要改革外在的環境，也需要培養內在的人。他從來沒有背棄邊沁的原則。他用餘生去擴大它的意思。

🔊In 1830 he met Harriet Taylor, who was twenty-two, married, and the mother of two children. For twenty years they maintained an intense friendship that scandalized London and that her husband tolerated. Two years after his death they married, in 1851, and Mill signed a formal protest against the legal powers that marriage gave him over her. She died at Avignon in 1858. He bought a house within sight of the cemetery and spent half of every year there. On Liberty appeared the following year, dedicated to her as “the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings.”

1830 年，他認識了海莉耶・泰勒；她二十二歲，已婚，是兩個孩子的母親。有二十年之久，他們維持著一段熱烈的友誼，使倫敦社會譁然，而她的丈夫容忍了。她丈夫去世兩年後，他們在 1851 年結婚；彌爾簽署了一份正式的抗議書，反對婚姻在法律上賦予他支配她的種種權力。1858 年，她在亞維儂去世。他買下了一棟看得見墓園的房子，每年有一半的時間住在那裡。《論自由》在隔年出版，題獻給她：「我著作中一切最好的東西的啟發者，而且有一部分是其作者。」

🔊In 1865 the voters of Westminster elected him to Parliament, though he had refused to campaign or to spend any money. In 1867 he moved that the word “man” in the Reform Bill be replaced by “person,” which would have given women the vote. The motion was lost, and seventy-three members voted for it, far more than anyone expected. The Subjection of Women followed in 1869. He died at Avignon in 1873 and was buried beside Harriet. He had agreed, the year before, to stand as godfather to the infant son of a friend. The child was Bertrand Russell.

1865 年，西敏選區的選民把他選進了國會，儘管他拒絕競選、也拒絕花一分錢。1867 年，他提案把《改革法案》裡的 man（男人）一詞換成 person（人），這樣就會讓女性有投票權。提案沒有通過，卻有七十三位議員投了贊成票，遠多於任何人的預期。《女性的屈從地位》接著在 1869 年出版。1873 年，他在亞維儂去世，葬在海莉耶身旁。去世的前一年，他答應當一位朋友剛出生的兒子的教父。那個孩子是羅素。