【英文翻译版55】贝丝·布卢姆：《自助》

英文文稿+中文翻译 

Zachary Davis: When I was 14, living in St. George, Utah, one of my favorite things to do was browse the bookshelves of my local thrift shop called Deseret Industries. I was mostly looking for classic books I’d heard of, but I started noticing that there was one book I would see again and again, of various ages, conditions and printings—a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Like many middle-schoolers, I didn’t think people liked me very much, and I wanted desperately to have more friends. So, I bought a 1967 edition, only slightly marked up with notes, and started reading it.

扎克里·戴维斯：我14岁时候，住在犹他州圣乔治市，那有一家叫“旧货工厂”的旧货店，我特别喜欢逛他们家的书架。我主要找经典书籍，不过我发现，有本书见到了很多次，出版日期、新旧、印刷各不相同，叫《人性的弱点》，作者是戴尔·卡耐基。和许多中学生一样，我感觉别人不太喜欢我，急着想多交些朋友。于是我买了本1967年出版的版本，上面只有一些简单的批注，然后就开始读了。

Zachary Davis: It was great! I learned so many useful things, like how the best way to get people to like you is to ask them to talk about themselves! What I didn’t realize is that I was reading a self-help book—one of the most popular ever. This genre is especially popular in America, a country that believes anyone can achieve anything with a little grit and determination. And their popularity doesn’t look to fade anytime soon. Sales of self-help books nearly doubled between 2013 and 2020.

扎克里·戴维斯：这书写得真的好！我学到了挺多有用的东西，比如说，让别人喜欢你的最好方法就是引导他们说自己的事。我没有意识到这是本大受欢迎的自助书。这种书在美国很有市场，因为这个国家相信，不管是谁，只要有点勇气和决心，就能实现任何事情。而且这类书的受欢迎程度没有丝毫消退的迹象，从2013年到2020年，自助书籍的销量几乎翻了一番。

Zachary Davis: Although perhaps the most famous, Dale Carnegie was not the first self-help author. That honor belongs to a man named Samuel Smiles.

扎克里·戴维斯：虽然戴尔·卡耐基可能名气最大，但他并不是第一位自助作家。这个头衔属于一个叫塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯的人。

Beth Blum: Many people have not heard of him, and if they have, they kind of write him off as being one of these kinds of Victorian practical writers who nobody really thinks about or cares about anymore. But actually, he was one of the very first authors to coin this term “self-help” and to really use it in the title of a book. My name is Beth Blum, and I'm an assistant professor of English at Harvard, and I specialize in modernist and contemporary literature.

贝丝·布卢姆：很多人根本不知道他，就算听说过，也会把他当成维多利亚时代一个无人问津的实用主义作家。但其实，他是最早发明“自助”这个词的作家之一，并且在书名中使用了它。我叫贝丝-布卢姆，是哈佛大学英语系的助理教授，我专门研究现代主义和当代文学。

Zachary Davis: Smiles published Self-Help in 1859. With this book, he invented a genre—though one that was certainly inspired by existing ones.

扎卡里·戴维斯：斯迈尔斯在1859年出版了《自助》，由此开创了一种新的形式，不过肯定也受了已有作品的启发。

Beth Blum: There's something about the ability of his, kind of, practical advice that resonates, I think, with these other practical wisdom traditions that one finds in, kind of, Japanese culture with its, kind of, inheritance of some Chinese Confucianism and other cultures as well. And so, every culture has their own wisdom tradition, and I think part of the kind of global appeal of Smiles is the way that he can complement these pre-existing advice traditions that are found in each place.

贝丝·布卢姆：我认为，他给的建议讲求实用性，与那些重实用的传统智慧产生了共鸣，比如继承了部分儒家思想与其他文化传统的日本文化。每一种文化都有自己的智慧传统，而斯迈尔斯的作品之所以在全世界都具有吸引力，部分原因在于他的建议对每个地方都存在的传统智慧是一种补充。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Beth Blum to discuss Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和贝丝·布卢姆教授一起讨塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯的《自助》。

Zachary Davis: Samuel Smiles was born in 1812.

扎卡里·戴维斯：塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯出生于1812年。

Beth Blum: He was born in Scotland. He had numerous brothers and sisters. And apparently, the story is that he got his appreciation for industry and perseverance from his mother, who was very hard working. And he worked as an editor.

贝丝·布卢姆：他出生在苏格兰，有许多兄弟姐妹。他对勤奋和毅力的称赞，可能与他勤劳的母亲有关。他自己是做编辑的。

Zachary Davis: At twenty-six, Smiles became the editor of the progressive newspaper, The Leeds Times. The position was a good fit for Smiles. He was dedicated to reforming the Scottish government. While working as the editor of The Leeds Times, he advocated for free trade, women’s suffrage, and parliamentary reform. He constantly attacked the aristocracy, but, despite his efforts, saw little change.

扎克里·戴维斯：二十六岁时，斯迈尔斯成为进步报纸《利兹时报》的编辑。这个职位很适合志在改革苏格兰政府的斯迈尔斯，在担任《利兹时报》编辑期间，他宣扬自由贸易、妇女选举权和议会改革。他不断抨击贵族政治，尽管尽心尽力，却不见多少变化。

Zachary Davis: After leaving The Leeds Times in 1842, he became an administrator in the railway and insurance industries. It was during this time that he became interested in a new kind of writing—biographies. In 1857, he published Life of George Stephenson, a biographical work on the inventor and founder of the railways. Stephenson helped pioneer the locomotive and developed the standard gauge for rail tracks. Smiles would go on to publish many other biographies, including Life of a Scotch Naturalist: Thomas Edward and George Moore, Merchant and Philanthropist.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1842年离开《利兹时报》后，他成为铁路和保险业中的管理人员。在这段时间，他对一种新的写作方式--传记产生了兴趣。1857年，他出版了《乔治·史蒂芬森的生活》，这是一部关于铁路发明家和创办人的传记作品。斯蒂芬森帮助开创了火车头，并制定了铁轨的标准轨距。斯迈尔斯后来还出版了许多其他传记，包括《一个苏格兰自然主义者的生活：托马斯·爱德华和乔治·摩尔，商人和慈善家》。

Zachary Davis: Smiles was also still interested in social reform, but he turned his attention from reforming parliament to reforming individuals. In 1859, he combined his interests in biography and reform when he published Self-Help.

扎卡里·戴维斯：斯迈尔斯仍对社会改革感兴趣，但他把注意力从改革议会转向改变个人。1859年，他将自己对传记和改革的兴趣结合起来，出版了《自助》。

Zachary Davis: Could you tell us now about the book itself? So, how is it organized? What was it like to read? Like, what was the book and what's in it?

扎克里·戴维斯：现在能不能给我们介绍一下这本书？它的结构是什么样？读起来是什么感觉？这本书说了什么？

Beth Blum: It’s called Self-Help with Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance. The “perseverance” was added in the second edition, and it became a key term. He came to regret the title because the book quickly acquired a reputation as kind of promoting selfishness. He said, “Oh, you know, in some sense the title is unfortunate because the book is perceived as offering a kind of eulogy of selfishness.” And that's not the spirit in which it's intended at all. In fact, he's much more interested in mutual aid and collaborative, kind of, collective improvement.

贝丝·布卢姆：这本书全名叫《性格、行为和毅力的图解自救》。“毅力”是在第二版中加入的，成了一个关键词。他后悔取了这个书名，因为大家认为这本书在宣扬自私。他说："唉，说实话，这个书名是真不好，这本书被误解成了对自私的称颂。" 但这并不符合这本书的精神，作者其实对互助、协作、群体进步更感兴趣。

Beth Blum: So, yeah, the book begins, you open it, and the first thing that I notice when I open the title page is that there's two quotations. One is by Shakespeare, and one is by Thackeray. So, right away, this gets me interested in Self-Help as being a form that is not separate from the literary, but one that's invested in a very, interested in literary quotation, and that's actually using literature throughout.

贝丝·布卢姆：打开这本书翻到扉页，一眼就能看到两句名言，一句是莎士比亚的，一句是萨克雷的。这让我立刻对《自助》产生了兴趣，因为它的形式没有脱离文学，文学引用是贯穿全书的。

Beth Blum: So, to me, what really is most striking about this handbook is that it contains just pages and pages of quotations from different authors that have been, kind of, taken out of their original context and repurposed as practical advice, so that it doesn't matter who's speaking, who the persona is, or what the, you know, the actual, original use of these quotations is, but the way that they can offer practical tips to readers.

贝丝·布卢姆：所以在我看来，这本书最显著的特征是，它大片引用了不同作者的名言，而这些名言脱离了原来的语境，被用作实用的建议。谁说的这些话，这些名言的原本的意思是什么，都不重要，只要对读者有实际的帮助就行。

Zachary Davis: In addition to practical tips, Smiles includes real stories of success. He shares biographical sketches of chemists, linguists, and other people—well, men—who have worked hard, persevered, and achieved success.

扎克里·戴维斯：除了实用的建议，斯迈尔斯还把真实的成功故事写了进去。他分享了化学家、语言学家和其他成功者的人生经历，他们努力工作，坚持不懈，最终有所成就。

Beth Blum: You know, so-and-so he had to walk eight miles to go to learn to read at the village school. Another person had to, kind of, practice learning grammar with the burnt end of a stem—you know, all of these cases of overcoming adversity and difficult origins to be successful. And that's really the, kind of, key form of the text. And the idea was that the very, kind of, abundance of names and examples was part of the, kind of, inspirational force of the text and that people would see all of these examples and realize that this kind of future would be obtainable for them as well.

贝丝·布卢姆：比如某个人要走八英里路去村里的学校学习，某个人用烧焦的茎端练习语法，总之就是克服逆境和贫寒出身获得成功的案例，这是书中文本的主要形式。书中出现了大量真实姓名和例子，它们内含一种鼓舞人心的力量，人们看到这些实例后就会明白，这样一种成功的未来对自己而言也是可实现的。

Zachary Davis: This message was key for Smiles. Scotland, like much of the Western world, was changing. Mass industrialization was on the rise. Many people found themselves stuck working long hours in factories, often in miserable conditions. People were being treated no better than the machines they operated.

扎克里·戴维斯：这是理解斯迈尔斯的关键。彼时的苏格兰和西方世界大部分地区一样，正经历着改变，工业化大生产正在崛起。很多人被束缚在工厂里，在艰苦的环境下长时间工作。人所受的待遇一点不比他们操作的机器好。

Beth Blum: He saw that there was a need for sources who could inspire and rouse working class individuals to, kind of, band together and to educate themselves. The population, you know, there was not a lot of literacy at the time, but there was some, and there was a kind of hunger for models of how one could, through literature, through reading, learn to, kind of, unite and advocate for better conditions.

贝丝·布卢姆：他意识到，需要一种激励和唤醒工人阶级的力量，让他们团结起来，自我教育。当时的人们识字率不高，但仍有一部分人渴望通过读书、学习把大家团结起来，改善生存环境。

Beth Blum: He was actually asked by a workingman's club to come and give lectures to the society. And the society, they met in an abandoned cholera hospital. So, Smiles was very impressed by the sign of industriousness and, kind of, ingenuity that these men would meet there and, just for the mere purpose of wanting to improve themselves.

贝丝·布卢姆：他其实是被一个工人社团邀请来给做演讲的。这个社团的成员们是在一个废弃的霍乱医院里见面的。斯迈尔斯对这些人的勤奋和智慧印象深刻，这些人在那里集会，单纯是为了提升自己。

Zachary Davis: He compiled his guidance and advice into Self-Help.

扎克里·戴维斯：他把自己的指导和建议编成了《自助》。

Beth Blum: And he went on to become a great, huge international sensation, and the book became tremendously popular all over the world.

贝丝·布卢姆：之后这本书在全世界引起了轰动，红极一时。

Zachary Davis: So, industrialization and capitalism are becoming more and more important as a factor in people's lives. And what do the ideas of personal growth have to do with these economic changes?

扎克里·戴维斯：工业化和资本主义越来越成为影响人们生活的重要因素，那么个人成长与这些经济变化有什么关系？

Beth Blum: So, Smiles was really concerned with the idea that people, laborers, miners, and people working in factories and in industry were overly, kind of, dependent on the idea of the government offering aid or support. And he wanted to argue that people should not depend on institutions for support. The problem is that that is often taken to be read as a kind of defense of laissez faire government and the idea that it's not the government's responsibility to support individuals or to intervene in the affairs of the working classes.

贝丝·布卢姆：斯迈尔斯真正关注的问题是，劳工、矿工、工厂和其他生产线上的人，过于依赖一种想法，觉得政府会提供援助或支持。他想说服大家，不要依赖机构的支持。然而，这常常被解读为对自由放任的政府的辩护，认为援助个人或解决工人阶级的问题不是政府的责任。

Beth Blum: But really, I think his politics were a little more radical and he was interested in kind of inspiring workers to show them to not wait for the government to intervene, but to try to themselves improve their conditions.

贝丝·布卢姆：但实际上，我认为他的政治立场要更激进一些，他想激励工人们，不要一味等待政府出手，要自己试着改善生存条件。

Zachary Davis:Smiles believed that without developing one’s character, worldly success was meaningless.

扎克里·戴维斯：斯迈尔斯认为，如果不发展自己的个性，世俗的成功是没有意义的。

Beth Blum:Smiles himself was inspired by Emerson and the idea of self-reliance. He was really inspired by John Stuart Mill. And so I think that this kind of energetic individualism, this philosophy of strong individualism was very much part of the “self culture” of the time. And also just these very quintessential Victorian values—thrift, determination, perseverance. These are just the epitome of the, kind of, Victorian ethic, and they're ones that Smiles came to really embody and to espouse.

贝斯·布卢姆：斯迈尔斯本人受到爱默生自立思想的启发，约翰·斯图亚特·密尔对他影响也很大。所以我认为，这种积极的个人主义，这种强烈的个人主义哲学是当时 "自我文化 "的一部分。这也是非常典型的维多利亚时代价值观，提倡节俭、决心和毅力，是那个时代道德体系的缩影，也是斯迈尔斯真正要表达和倡导的。

Zachary Davis:What did he think was going to happen with this book?

扎克里·戴维斯：他对这本书有何期待呢？

Beth Blum: Yeah, so, he imagined the book as, as a resource for these young autodidacts who wanted to improve themselves. And this is interesting because Self-Help is often critiqued for being kind of anti-political, for discouraging social kind of reform and progress and encouraging people instead to focus on their own individual problems, their individual temperament, at the expense of, kind of, broader social reform.

贝丝·布卢姆：他希望这本书能为通过自学提升自己的年轻人提供帮助。这一点很值得说道，因为《自助》经常被批评的原因是，它不鼓励社会改革和进步，而是鼓励人们关注性格之类的个人问题，忽略了更广泛的社会改革。

Beth Blum: It's almost less the precise, kind of, tips the book offers than the just general, kind of, inspiration to go out and to forge one's way in the world, to leave behind, you know, one's origins and to try to create a new life. This is something that people really felt when they read Smiles’ book. And not just, kind of, British laborers, but people all over the world.

贝丝·布卢姆：这本书很少给出精确的建议，更多的是大方向的鼓励，它号召人们走出去，在这个世界开辟自己的道路，不用在意出身，努力创造新的生活。不止英国劳工，全世界读者在读斯迈尔斯时都能 感受到这种精神。

Beth Blum: So, there's incredible examples of people in Korea, in Africa, in Egypt who read Self-Help and were inspired by this, not to, kind of, accept the political reality as it was, but to go on and try to fight for political independence, and to advocate for reform, and all of this kind of fascinating stuff.

贝丝·布卢姆：在韩国、非洲、埃及就有很好的例子，人们读了《自助》后，并没有接受政治现实，而是继续争取政治独立，倡导改革，追求进步。

Beth Blum:So, so Smiles is a really interesting example, because he shows how difficult it is to say, “Well, this is the influence of Self-Help. It's one thing, and this is what it did.” But it shows the way that people use books for different purposes depending on their context and the different possibilities that every book, kind of, contains in terms of that influence.

贝丝·布卢姆：所以斯迈尔斯的例子非常值得探讨，人们很难断言：“嗯，这就是《自助》的影响，就是这么回事。” 它说明处在不同环境的人会将同一本书用于不同的目的，书的影响是多种多样的。

Zachary Davis:It does sound like it's, you know, very isolated individuals, that society is sort of this neutral environment of struggle, and you have to just push your way up. You know? What is the philosophy of the individual at the time that, that this is written?

扎克里·戴维斯：这本书似乎并不推崇孤立的个体，也不把社会看作一个逼着你拼命的竞技场，作者那个时代的个人哲学是怎样的？

Beth Blum:There was a much, kind of, a much stronger belief in the kind of transcendent possibilities of individual agency than you find in, kind of, post-structuralist or modernist, kind of, discourse. So, a real, kind of, faith in the ability of, of the will to transcend circumstance. And you can see how that would line up with some, kind of, more recent self-help, which argues that, you know, kind of returns to this idea that the individual can use mind power, use visualization to improve their conditions and become rich or become popular or whatever you want.

贝丝·布卢姆：当时有一种强烈的信念，认为个人可以超越自我的束缚，这比后结构主义或现代主义对个人的理解要激进得多，当时的人无比坚定地相信超越环境的意志力。可以看到，这种信念与当今的自立观念是有联系的，如今的观念一定程度上回归到了这样一种信条上：也就是说，个人可以使用心灵的力量，通过展望未来去改善他们生活条件，进而能实现任何愿望，不论你是想要变得有钱还是有人缘。

Zachary Davis: So, he publishes this book, and, as you said before, it became a sensation. What was the immediate reception of this book, and how did it change both Samuel's life and people who read it? Like, you know, what are some of the early influences of the text?

扎克里·戴维斯：所以，他出版了这本书，然后，就像你之前说的那样，引起了轰动。这本书出版后立即收到什么样的反响，它是如何改变塞缪尔和读者的生活的？比如，像是，这本书的早期影响有哪些？

Beth Blum:Yes, so the book was tremendously popular when it appeared. It’s said that Victorian readers would have, you know, a copy of the Bible and a copy of Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help. And those were the two books that everyone, kind of, had. But it was not only popular in Britain, but all over the world. And to me, one of the most fascinating examples of this is that the book became incredibly popular in Meiji Japan.

贝丝·布卢姆：是的，这本书面世的时候是非常受欢迎的。据说维多利亚时代的读者都拥有，你知道的，一本《圣经》和一本塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯的《自助》。这两本书是大家，可以说每个人都会买的。但它不仅仅在英国流行，甚至传播到了全世界。对我来说，其中最有趣的地方是，这本书在明治时期的日本也十分畅销。

Beth Blum: So, in the early 20th century, the book was translated in Japan by a Confucian scholar, and it became just this enormous sensation. Japan had been a closed society for two centuries, and then suddenly the doors were open and there was a great eagerness to hear about the West, to kind of absorb the stories and lessons of the West.

贝丝·布卢姆：所以，在20世纪初，这本书在日本被一位儒家学者翻译了出来，引起巨大的轰动。日本在此前两百年间一直是一个封闭的社会，但突然间，国门打开了，人们对西方的事情如饥似渴，渴望了解西方的故事，吸取西方发展的经验教训。

Beth Blum:And Samuel Smiles’s book became a kind of cheat sheet to modernization, and you had people lining up overnight to buy a copy. You had the book being used as a kind of textbook in, in schools. It was called the Bible of the Meiji. And the thing that really fascinates me about that is that through Smiles's quotations of literary texts, many of the really most popular Western literary texts were first introduced to Japan.

贝丝·布卢姆：塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯的书成了一本现代化的小抄，人们为了买这本书整夜排队。在学校这本书被当作教材使用。它被称作“明治时代的《圣经》”。而真正让我感兴趣的是，因为斯迈尔斯书中的引用，许多真正受欢迎的西方文学作品被首次引入日本。

Beth Blum: So, it was because Smiles was quoting people like Emerson or Mill or Shakespeare, even, that these books themselves then went on to be translated and became bestsellers in their own right in Japan. So, to me this is fascinating because it shows that Self-Helpwas not just about, kind of, teaching people to be self-reliant, but it was also doing this work of spreading literature and in a funny way, in a decontextualized and sort of, like, a non-synchronic way.

贝丝·布卢姆：所以，正是因为斯迈尔斯引用了爱默生、密尔，甚至莎士比亚这些人的作品，他们的书才会被翻译出来，然后才会在日本成为畅销书。所以，这一点很令我着迷，因为这表明，《自助》不仅仅，可以说，教人们如何自立自主，它也在承担着文学传播的任务，而且是以一种有趣的方式，以一种去语境化的、有点像非共时性的方式。

Beth Blum: So, you'd have Shakespeare being introduced with Ibsen, or something, you know. But it shows that the people were learning about literature through Smiles's work and not just learning about, kind of, Victorian British literature, but about all sorts of, kind of, classic Western texts.

贝丝·布卢姆：比如说，莎士比亚就和易卜生等作家一块被引进了。但这说明，人们是通过斯迈尔斯的作品来了解文学，并且不仅仅是了解维多利亚时代的英国文学，而是各种经典的西方作品。

Zachary Davis:So, I'd like to understand now the history of the self-help genre a little bit more. How does this genre… As we understand it today, where does it come from? And then how does it come together with that title in Smiles' work?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我现在想再了解一下自助类体裁的历史。这种体裁是怎么来的？它和斯迈尔斯作品的标题有什么关系？

Beth Blum:Yeah. I mean, there's so many competing accounts of where self-help really begins. Some people really consider it to be a very modern phenomenon and associate it with the 1950s or with the 1930s in the U.S. and Dale Carnegie. And they're very shocked to think of it as having this longer history.

贝丝·布卢姆：关于自助类体裁的起源，有许多互相矛盾的说法。有些人认为它是一种非常现代的产物，把它和上世纪50年代或30年代的美国以及戴尔·卡耐基联系在一起。他们难以想象这类体裁会有更悠久的历史。

Beth Blum:And then other people say, “Well, Aristotle had a version of self-help. You can find versions of self-help in Buddhism and all sorts of ancient wisdom traditions.” And so I think it's, it's useful to differentiate between, kind of, the history of conduct literature and the rise of the self-help industry proper, which I think really hinges, actually, on Samuel Smiles in the publication of his book and the context of self culture surrounding that.

贝丝·布卢姆：其他人则会说：“亚里士多德提过自助。佛教和各种古老智慧也提出了不同版本的自助”。我认为，将行为指南之类的书籍的历史和自助文学的兴起区分开来是很有帮助的。其实，我认为自助文学兴起的关键是塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯《自助》这本书的出版以及与之相关的自我文化。

Beth Blum:So, he wasn't the only one using the term “self-help” or interested in self culture. There were several, kind of, pamphlets and things being published around that topic when he was writing, but he was the one who turned it into a global sensation and who really kind of managed to embody that spirit more than any other.

贝丝·布卢姆：所以，斯迈尔斯并不是唯一一个使用“自助”这个说法或对自我文化感兴趣的人。在他写《自助》这本书的时候，已经有一些关于自助的出版物，但他让自助这个概念火遍全球，而且他比任何人更能体现自助精神。

Beth Blum: But I think that it's kind of fascinating that one of these first very popular manifestations of the self-help spirit was written by a Scottish author, Samuel Smiles, and a huge sensation in Britain, in Japan, all over the world. So, it really kind of broadens our understanding of and our association of self-help as being a specifically American mid-century phenomenon.

贝丝·布卢姆：我认为有趣的是，这本非常受欢迎的自助文学作品由一位来自苏格兰的作家，也就是塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯所写，并在英国、日本乃至全世界引起了巨大的轰动。所以，在某种程度上它改变了我们对于自助的理解，不再仅仅把它看作美国上世纪中期的一种现象。

Zachary Davis:What are the works that come after that kind of carry the genre forward?

扎卡里·戴维斯：在斯迈尔斯之后，有哪些作品将这一体裁发扬光大呢？

Beth Blum: After Smiles, probably the next most important self-help author published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936. And interestingly, Carnegie himself was largely inspired by someone named Orison Swett Marden, who is an early 20th century American self-help author who, like so many others, first had this great awakening when he stumbled across Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help in an attic. And this is what convinced him that he needed to become a motivational, inspirational author. So, you see that there's a kind of lineage that can be traced from Smiles to Marden to Dale Carnegie, and I think the influence continues.

贝丝·布卢姆：在斯迈尔斯之后最为重要的自助文学作家可能是戴尔·卡耐基。他在1936年出版了《人性的弱点》。有趣的是，卡耐基的创作灵感主要来自奥里森·斯威特·马登，而马登是一位20世纪初的美国自助文学作家。和很多人一样，马登在阁楼里偶然发现了塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯写的《自助》，才有了第一次觉醒。而这让卡耐基坚信，他要成为一个启发人们的励志书作家。所以，从斯迈尔斯到马登，再到卡耐基，有一种传承，我认为这种传承还在延续。

Beth Blum:And a big part of that influence is the way that Samuel Smiles resisted institutional learning and was actually sort of not an overly fan of book learning in general. So, even though here he is writing this almost 400-page guide to how to live, he, kind of, his book is littered with comments to the effect of, you know, “Living is more important than, than learning. Go outside. Don't just spend your life reading in a dusty library, but go and act and make your way in the world!”

贝丝·布卢姆：塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯抵制制度化学习，这对后世产生了很大的影响。事实上，斯迈尔斯对一般的书本知识并不太感冒。虽然他写了这本近400页的生活指南，但他的书里经常提到：“生活比学习更重要。出门走走，不要只是在布满灰尘的图书馆里埋头读书， 去行动，去获得成功！”

Beth Blum: And this kind of tension between the, the active and the contemplative life continues to inform self-help as it goes along so that, you know, a great deal of self-help today is still very invested in pointing out what is wrong with academic or institutional learning and education and in suggesting alternate paths and trying to reach people who feel excluded from these more orthodox, kind of, intellectual avenues like the university.

贝丝·布卢姆：在自助文学发展的过程中，积极的生活和沉思的生活之间的冲突一直存在。现在有许多自助文学仍在用大量篇幅指出学校或制度化学习和教育的问题，并给出替代方案，并试图触及那些觉得自己被排除在大学等正统教育渠道之外的人。

Zachary Davis: Okay, so we have the 1930s American tradition with Dale Carnegie, which we're in a recession, everyone's struggling and they need some kind of help. What are some of the next milestones in this story?

扎卡里·戴维斯：上世纪30年代我们有美国的戴尔·卡耐基。当时正处于经济衰退期，人们过得很艰难，需要帮助。那下一个里程碑是什么？

Beth Blum:So, Dale Carnegie is kind of coming at the tail end of a movement called New Thought which is a philosophy that believes and.... It's a kind of quasi-religious, transcendental philosophy that combines a bunch of different spiritual traditions. And it's, you know, very much premised on this idea of positive visualization or what is called “the Law of Attraction,” a phrase I think everyone's heard. So, the idea that the energy and the thoughts that you put out into the world will kind of attract whatever energy you're putting out.

贝丝·布卢姆：戴尔·卡耐基出现在在所谓的“新思维运动”的末期。这种运动倡导一种类似宗教的、超验的哲学，结合了一堆不同的宗教传统。它有个很重要的前提，就是正面显化或者所谓的“吸引力法则”，大家应该都听说过。也就是说，你向外投射给世界的能量和想法会吸引相同的东西。

Beth Blum: So, if you're putting out positive energy, then you will attract wealth, you will attract friends and success. And this mindset, I think you can see how it extends Smiles’ emphasis on the importance of not waiting for government support or whatnot, but using your own power of mind and industry to kind of make the most of your situation.

贝丝·布卢姆：如果你投射的是正能量，那么你就会获得财富、朋友和成功。你可以看到，这种思维和斯迈尔斯的观点一样，都强调不要等待政府或者其他的帮助，而是用自己的思想的力量最大程度地改变局势。

Beth Blum:And then you can see how that in turn gives rise—I mean, self-help goes in waves, so there's many different tides in between this—but to something like The Secret, which is very much a kind of rehashed New Thought philosophy, again tapping into this idea, this fantasy that there could be a kind of trick to life, you know, or a hack, and that the secret to how to live is contained in all of the literature and all of these books of the past if one knows how to mine them correctly.

贝丝·布卢姆：你还可以看到，这反过来导致了《秘密》之类的书的出现。因为我们知道，自助运动是一波一波兴起的，《秘密》与新思维运动之间隔了好几波浪潮，但《秘密》这本书提供了一种翻版的新思维哲学，它同样基于下面这种想法：生活有其诀窍，它的秘密就包含在所有的文学作品和这些已出版的书中，你只需知道如何正确地挖掘它们。

Beth Blum:And then, of course, you know, in the wake of The Secret, which is a tremendously popular book of the recent past, you get this life-hacking movement, which is again interested in, first of all, kind of, finding alternatives to “official” knowledge practices and kind of subverting established ideas about how one should live and what one should do, and has become tremendously popular today, and then all the way up to kind of the contemporary interest in what right now we're seeing a real resurgence of stoicism in self-help. So an interest in, again, this question of using the mind to reframe a situation in order to learn to kind of adjust to it and make the most of it.

贝丝·布卢姆：《秘密》是一本近些年非常流行的书。它引发了“生活黑客”运动。一开始，这场运动在某种程度上致力于找到“正式”学习的替代方案，它颠覆了人应该如何生活和应该做什么的既定想法，现今已经变得非常流行。当代，这场运动还和自助运动中斯多葛主义的复兴很有关系。也就是说，人们再次开始对用想法去重构情景、改变局势产生兴趣。

Zachary Davis: When Samuel Smiles published Self-Help, he was trying to help the 19th century working class in Scotland. But his writing captured universal longings. His book empowered people across the world to take control of their own lives, and it gave them hope that they could actually improve their circumstances.

扎卡里·戴维斯：塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯出版《自助》，是想要帮助19世纪苏格兰的工人阶级。但他的书反映了人们的普遍渴望，让全世界的人都有能力掌控自己的生活，给了他们希望，让他们能够真正改善自己的环境。

Beth Blum: Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help changed the world by inspiring people from all over the globe to educate themselves, to recognize that they weren't, they didn't have to be limited by the conditions of their birth, but that they could fashion themselves and change them themselves through reading, through literature, and through this spirit of independence and self-reliance that he promoted.

贝丝·布卢姆：塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯的《自助》改变了世界，激励着来自全球各地的人们进行自我教育，让人们认识到自己不必受出身的限制，而是可以通过阅读、文学以及斯迈尔斯提倡的独立、自助的精神来塑造自己、改变自己。

Beth Blum: I think there's always going to be a real hunger for advice about how to live and practical tips about how to live, and people who are willing to just get really explicit about helping people to kind of develop strategies or equipment for living, as it's called. And then that's part of the appeal of Samuel Smiles, it's the appeal of stoicism, Dale Carnegie, and the like. And that is something that I don't think will ever go out of fashion.

贝丝·布卢姆：我觉得总会有人真正地渴望得到生活指导和一些实用技巧，也总是有愿意明确地帮助人们制定生活策略的人。这是斯多葛主义、塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯和戴尔·卡耐基等人的魅力之所在，也是我认为永远不会过时的东西。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！