29Julyиюля · 29-е июля
Чем нужнее предмет, тем губительнее злоупотребление им. Большая часть бедствий людей происходит от злоупотребления самым драгоценным орудием жизни — разумом.
The more necessary a thing, the more ruinous its misuse. Most of the calamities people suffer come from the misuse of the most precious instrument of life — reason.
1. Бог дал дух свой, разум, чтобы мы могли понимать его волю и исполнять ее; а мы этот дух употребляем на исполнение своей воли.
1. God gave us his spirit, reason, so that we might understand his will and fulfill it; but we use this spirit to fulfill our own will.
Translation note. The Russian italic is broken only at the commas; it is set here as one span.
2. Разум, становясь слугой порока, орудием страстей, защитником лжи, не только извращается, но делается больным, теряя способность различения правды и лжи, добра и зла, праведного и неправедного.
2. Reason, when it becomes the servant of vice, the instrument of the passions, the defender of falsehood, is not only perverted but becomes diseased, losing the power to distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil, the righteous from the unrighteous.
From On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes · close to the original .
What Tolstoy read · The Message of Man: A Book of Ethical Scriptures, gathered by Stanton Coit… a pander to vice, a tool of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded but diseased. It loses the capacity of distinguishing truth from falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong.
Source text: archive.orgChanning’s own wordsThe intellect, in becoming a pander to vice, a tool of the passions, an advocate of lies, becomes not only degraded, but diseased. It loses the capacity of distinguishing truth from falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong …
Source text: archive.orgDetails
The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes (lectures to the Mechanic Apprentices' Library Association, Boston, 1840), The paragraph on the love of truth as the motive of intellectual force; The Works of William E. Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1890), p. 45.
A close translation of Channing's two sentences, made one: 'It loses the capacity' becomes the participle 'losing the capacity' (теряя способность). 'a pander to vice' becomes 'a servant of vice' (слугой порока); 'becomes not only degraded, but diseased' becomes 'is not only perverted but becomes diseased'; 'right from wrong' becomes 'the righteous and the unrighteous'. The two sentences are verse 9 of a chapter of Coit's The Message of Man (1902), word for word (What Tolstoy read), in the chapter from which May took Martineau's 5-21.5. Faithful to the English: printable offered; the reviewer may prefer Tolstoy's version, since 'pander' is softened to 'servant' and 'degraded' rendered 'perverted'.
3. Когда человек употребляет свой разум на разрешение вопроса о том, зачем существует мир и зачем он сам живет в этом мире, с человеком делается что-то вроде дурноты, головокружения. Ум человека не может придумать ответы на эти вопросы. Что же это значит? А то, что разум человеку не дан на то, чтобы отвечать на эти вопросы, что самое задавание таких вопросов означает заблуждение разума. Разум решает только вопрос: «как жить?» И ответ ясен: жить так, чтобы было хорошо и мне и всем людям. Это нужно всему живущему и мне. И возможность этого дана всему живущему и мне. И это решение исключает вопросы: отчего и зачем.
3. When we use our reason to resolve the question of what the world exists for and what we ourselves live in this world for, something like faintness, like dizziness, comes over us. The human mind cannot devise answers to these questions. What does this mean? Only that reason was not given to us for answering these questions, and that the very asking of such questions signifies an error of reason. Reason resolves only the question: “How are we to live?” And the answer is clear: to live so that it is well both for me and for all people. All that lives needs this, and so do I. And the possibility of it is given to all that lives, and to me. And this resolution excludes the questions why and what for.
Translation note. «Зачем» asks for a purpose, “what for,” and «отчего» for a cause, “why”; both are in the closing words.
4. Те люди, которые употребляют свой разум на ненужные предметы, похожи на ночных птиц, которые видят в темноте, но слепнут при солнечном свете. Их ум очень проницателен, когда они употребляют его на научные пустяки, но он перестает видеть, когда его поражает истинный свет.
4. Those people who use their reason on needless things are like night birds, which see in the dark but go blind in the light of the sun. Their mind is very keen when they use it on scientific trifles, but it ceases to see when the true light strikes it.
Source not found yet .
Related · Aristotle, Metaphysics… ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ τῶν νυκτερίδων ὄμματα πρὸς τὸ φέγγος ἔχει τὸ μεθʼ ἡμέραν, οὕτω καὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς ὁ νοῦς πρὸς τὰ τῇ φύσει φανερώτατα πάντων.
Source text: raw.githubusercontent.comDetails
Not found yet.
Not found. The Jubilee name index identifies «Питтакус» only as one of the Seven Sages (vol. 41, p. 538). None of the sayings of Pittacus in Diogenes Laertius or Moralistes anciens is this one, and its "scientific trifles" and "true light" sound modern. The image of the night birds, who see in the dark and are blinded by daylight, is Aristotle's (Metaphysics II.1): "as the eyes of bats are to the light of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all" (related); there it describes the weakness of every human mind before the highest truths, here the minds that waste themselves on useless things. The signature is doubtful; the source Tolstoy read was not identified.
Searched: Moralistes anciens (1841), whose lives and sayings of the Seven Sages include Pittacus; Boiste's Dictionnaire universel (1851); Ramage's Greek and Latin Authors; Diogenes Laertius (Hicks) and the other saved texts naming Pittacus; the saved sources for "night birds", "birds of night", "oiseaux de nuit", "Nachtvögel"; Thoughts of Wise Men (1903) and Jubilee vols. 41–43 and 45; web searches in English and French.
5. Долга ночь для того, кто не спит. Длинна верста тому, кто устал; долга жизнь для безумного.
5. Long is the night for one who does not sleep. Long is the mile to one who is weary; long is life for the fool.
Translation note. “Mile” renders «верста», the verst, the old Russian measure of a little over a kilometer.
Назначение разума — открывание истины, и потому великое и губительное заблуждение — употребление разума на скрывание или извращение истины.
The purpose of reason is the uncovering of truth, and therefore the use of reason for covering up or perverting truth is a great and ruinous error.
Tolstoy TodayТолстой сегодня · tolstoytoday.org/july/29