IF HISTORY had to deal with external phenomena, the establishment of this simple and obvious law would be sufficient, and our argument would be at an end. —
如果历史必须与外部现象打交道，建立这个简单而明显的法则就足够了，我们的论证也就结束了。 —

But the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the inevitability of attraction and repulsion, and that the law is not true. —
但是历史的法则与人有关。物质的一粒粒子不能告诉我们它不感受到引力和斥力的必然性，也不能说这个法则不成立。 —

Man, who is the subject of history, bluntly says: —
作为历史的主体，人直截了当地说：我是自由的，所以不受法律约束。 —

I am free, and so I am not subject to law.
即使没有明确表达，意志自由的问题也在历史的每一步中都能感受到。

The presence of the question of the freedom of the will, if not openly expressed, is felt at every step in history.
所有认真思考的历史学家都会不自觉地引向这个问题。

All seriously thinking historians are involuntarily led to this question. —
历史上的所有矛盾、模糊和科学走入的错误道路都是由于这个未解决的问题。 —

All the inconsistencies, and the obscurity of history, and the false path that science has followed, is due to that unsolved question.
如果每个人的意志都是自由的，也就是说，每个人都可以随意行事，整个历史将成为一系列毫无联系的偶然事件。

If the will of every man were free, that is, if every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents.
如果一千年中只有一人中的一个人能够自由地行动，即按他的选择行动，那么很明显，那个人的一次自由行为与统治人类行动的法律相对立，将摧毁任何规律统治整个人类的可能性。

If one man only out of millions once in a thousand years had the power of acting freely, that is, as he chose, it is obvious that a single free act of that man in opposition to the laws governing human action would destroy the possibility of any laws whatever governing all humanity.
如果只有一个控制人类行为的法律，就不可能有自由意志，因为人的意志必须服从那个法律。

If there is but one law controlling the actions of men, there can be no free will, since men’s will must be subject to that law.
这个矛盾体现了意志的自由问题，自古以来一直是人类最优秀的智力所关注的问题，也一直被视为极其重要。

In this contradiction lies the question of the freedom of the will, which from the most ancient times has occupied the best intellects of mankind, and has from the most ancient times been regarded as of immense importance.
从任何观察人作为一个观察对象的角度来看，无论是从神学、历史、伦理学还是哲学的角度，我们都发现人作为存在物是受一种普遍的必然性法则所约束的。

Looking at man as a subject of observation from any point of view—theological, historical, ethical, philosophical—we find a general law of necessity to which he is subject like everything existing. —
从我们内心的观察来看，我们感觉自由。 —

Looking at him from within ourselves, as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves free.
这种意识是一个完全独立于理性的自我认识的来源。

This consciousness is a source of self-knowledge utterly apart and independent of reason. —
这种意识在我们内心中是一个完全独立于理性的自我认识的来源。 —

Through reason man observes himself; but he knows himself only through consciousness.
通过理性，人可以观察自己；但只有通过意识，他才能真正了解自己。

Apart from consciousness of self, any observation and application of reason is inconceivable.
除了对自我意识之外，任何观察和理性的应用都是不可思议的。

To understand, to observe, to draw conclusions, a man must first of all be conscious of himself as living. —
为了理解、观察和得出结论，一个人首先必须意识到自己的存在。 —

A man knows himself as living, not otherwise than as willing, that is, he is conscious of his free will. —
一个人之所以意识到自己的存在，是因为他意识到自己的自由意志。 —

Man is conscious of his will as constituting the essence of his life, and he cannot be conscious of it except as free.
人意识到他的自由意志构成了他生活的本质，他只能将其视为自由的意识到。

If subjecting himself to his own observation, a man perceives that his will is always controlled by the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking food, or of exercising his brain, or anything else), he cannot regard this never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation of it. —
如果通过观察他自己，一个人发现他的意志总是受到同样的规律控制（无论是他意识到需要进食还是锻炼大脑等），他只能将这种意志的不变方向看作是对其的限制。 —

If it were not free, it could not be limited. —
如果意志不是自由的，它就不能被限制。 —

A man’s will seems to him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as free. —
一个人将他的意志视为被限制的，只是因为他意识到它是自由的。 —

You say: I am not free. But I have lifted and dropped my hand. —
你说：我不是自由的。但是我举起了手，又放下了。 —

Everybody understands that this illogical reply is an irrefutable proof of freedom.
每个人都明白这个不合逻辑的回答是自由的无可辩驳的证明。

This reply is an expression of a consciousness not subject to reason.
这个回答是一种不受理性支配的意识的表达。

If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate source of self-knowledge apart from reason, it would be controlled by reasoning and experience. —
如果自由意识不是超越理性的自我认识的独立源泉，它就会受到推理和经验的控制。 —

But in reality such control never exists, and is inconceivable.
但实际上，这种控制从来不存在，也是无法想象的。

A series of experiments and arguments prove to every man that he, as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and the man submits to them, and never, after they have once been pointed out to him, controverts the law of gravity or of impenetrability. —
一系列的实验证明，对每个人来说，作为观察对象，他受到某些规律的约束，这个人顺从这些规律，一旦这些规律被指出，他就不再质疑重力或不可穿透性的定律。 —

But the same series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible; —
但是同样一系列的实验证明，他所意识到的完全自由是不可能的。 —

that every action of his depends on his organisation, on his character, and the motives acting on him. —
他的每一个行动都取决于他的组织、他的品格和影响他的动机。 —

But man never submits to the deductions of these experiments and arguments.
但人从不顺从于这些实验和论证的推导。

Learning from experience and from reasoning that a stone falls to the ground, a man unhesitatingly believes this; —
通过经验和推理得知石头落地，人们毫不犹豫地相信这一点； —

and in all cases expects the law he has learnt to be carried out.
并且在所有情况下都期待着所学到的法则能够得到执行。

But learning just as incontestably that his will is subject to laws, he does not, and cannot, believe it.
但同样毋庸置疑地了解到他的意志受到法则的制约，他不相信也无法相信。

However often experience and reasoning show a man that in the same circumstances, with the same character, he does the same thing as before, yet on being led the thousandth time in the same circumstances, with the same character, to an action that always ends in the same way, he feels just as unhesitatingly convinced that he can act as he chooses, as ever. —
然而，尽管经验和推理屡次表明，在相同环境下，同样的品格下，他会做与以前相同的事情，但在第一千次被带到相同的情境中，用相同的品格，进行总能以相同方式结束的行动时，他感到自己可以自由选择行动的确信一如既往。 —

Every man, savage and sage alike, however incontestably reason and experience may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action under precisely the same circumstances, yet feels that without this meaningless conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot conceive of life. —
每个人，无论是野蛮人还是智者，不管理性和经验如何无可置疑地向他证明，在完全相同的情况下无法想象两种不同的行动方式，但他感到没有这个毫无意义的概念（构成自由的本质），他无法想象生活。 —

He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so; —
他感到无论多么不可能，它就是这样； —

seeing that, without that conception of freedom, he would be not only unable to understand life, but could not live for a single instant.
因为没有了自由的这个概念，他不仅不能理解生活，甚至连一瞬间都无法生活。

He could not live because all men’s instincts, all their impulses in life, are only efforts to increase their freedom. —
他无法生活，因为所有人的本能，所有人在生活中的冲动，都只是为了增加他们的自由。 —

Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labour and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all only terms for greater or less degrees of freedom.
贫富、健康与疾病、文化与无知、劳动与闲暇、满足与饥饿、美德与恶习，都只是更大或更小程度的自由的词语。

To conceive a man having no freedom is impossible except as a man deprived of life.
想象一个没有自由的人是不可能的，除非是一个被剥夺了生命的人。

If the idea of freedom appears to the reason a meaningless contradiction, like the possibility of doing two actions at a single moment of time, or the possibility of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.
如果自由的概念对于理性来说是一个毫无意义的矛盾，就像在同一瞬间做出两个行动的可能性，或者没有原因的效果的可能性一样，那只能证明意识不受理性的支配。

That unwavering, irrefutable consciousness of freedom, not influenced by experience and argument, recognised by all thinkers, and felt by all men without exception, that consciousness without which no conception of man is reliable, constitutes the other side of the question.
那种坚定不移、无可争辩的自由意识，不受经验和论证的影响，被所有思想家所认可，所有人无一例外都感受到，这种意识是人性概念中不可缺少的一面。

Man is the creation of an Almighty, All-good, and All-wise God. What is sin, the conception of which follows from man’s consciousness of freedom? —
人是全能、全善、全智的上帝创造的。罪恶是从人对自由的意识中产生的概念。 —

That is the question of theology.
这是一个关于神学的问题。

Men’s actions are subject to general and invariable laws, expressed in statistics. —
人的行为受制于普遍而不变的法则，以统计数据来表达。 —

What is man’s responsibility to society, the conception of which follows from his consciousness of freedom? —
对社会负责是从人对自由的意识中产生的概念。 —

That is the question of jurisprudence.
这是一个关于法学的问题。

A man’s actions follow from his innate character and the motives acting on him. —
人的行为源于他的天性和驱使他的动机。 —

What is conscience and the sense of right and wrong in action that follows from the consciousness of freedom? —
良知和对行为中对错的感知是从自由意识中产生的。 —

That is the question of ethics.
这是一个关于伦理学的问题。

Man in connection with the general life of humanity is conceived as governed by the laws that determine that life. —
人与人类整体生活的关系被认为受制于决定这种生活的法则。 —

But the same man, apart from that connection, is conceived of as free. —
但是，除去那种联系时，同一个人被认为是自由的。 —

How is the past life of nations and of humanity to be regarded—as the product of the free or not free action of men? —
如何看待民族和人类的过去生活——是人们的自由行为的产物，还是不受自由约束的行为的产物？ —

That is the question of history.
这是一个关于历史学的问题。

Only in our conceited age of the popularisation of knowledge, thanks to the most powerful weapon of ignorance—the diffusion of printed matter—the question of the freedom of the will has been put on a level, on which it can no longer be the same question. —
只有在我们这个自负的知识普及时代中，借助于最强大的无知武器——印刷品的传播，自由意志的问题才被放在一个无法再是同一个问题的层面上。 —

In our day the majority of so-called advanced people—that is, a mob of ignoramuses—have accepted the result of the researches of natural science, which is occupied with one side only of the question, for the solution of the whole question.
在我们这个时代，所谓的进步思想者大多数—也就是一群愚蠢的人—接受了自然科学研究的结果，而这些研究仅仅关注问题的一面，作为整个问题的解决办法。

There is no soul and no free will, because the life of man is expressed in muscular movements, and muscular movements are conditioned by nervous activity. —
没有灵魂，也没有自由意志，因为人的生命表现在肌肉运动上，而肌肉运动受神经活动的调控。 —

There is no soul and no free will, because at some unknown period of time we came from apes, they say, and write, and print. —
没有灵魂，也没有自由意志，因为他们说、写、印刷的是我们在某个未知的时期从猿类进化而来。 —

Not at all suspecting that thousands of years ago all religions and all thinkers have admitted—have never, in fact, denied—that same law of necessity, which they are now so strenuously trying to prove by physiology and comparative zoology. —
他们丝毫没有怀疑到，数千年来所有的宗教和思想家都承认 - 其实从未否认过 - 那种必然性的法则，而他们如今又通过生理学和比较动物学竭力要证明它。 —

They do not see that natural science can do no more in this question than serve to illumine one side of it. —
他们没有看到自然科学在这个问题上所能做的也只不过是从一个方面来阐明而已。 —

The fact that, from the point of view of observation, the reason and the will are but secretions of the brain, and that man, following the general law of development, may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of time, only illustrates in a new aspect the truth, recognised thousands of years ago by all religious and philosophic theories, that man is subject to the laws of necessity. —
从观察的角度来看，理智和意志只不过是大脑的分泌物，而人根据发展的普遍法则可能在某个未知的时期从更低级的动物中发展而来，这只是以一种新的方式阐明了几千年来所有宗教和哲学理论所承认的真理，即人类受制于必然的法律。 —

It does not advance one hair’s-breadth the solution of the question, which has another opposite side, founded on the consciousness of freedom.
从而对于问题的解决没有丝毫推进（尽管从另一个截然相反的角度来看，基于自由意识的原因）。

If men have descended from apes at an unknown period of time, that is as comprehensible as that they were fabricated out of a clod of earth at a known period of time (in the one case the date is the unknown quantity, in the other the method of fabrication); —
如果人类在某个未知的时期是从猿类进化而来的，这和他们在一个已知的时期是由一块土壤制造出来的是一样可以理解的（在一个情况下是未知的数量，在另一个情况下是制造的方法）。 —

and the question how to reconcile man’s consciousness of free will with the law of necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by physiology and zoology, seeing that in the frog, the rabbit, and the monkey we can observe only muscular and nervous activity, while in man we find muscular and nervous activity plus consciousness.
而要解决人类自由意志的自觉与其受制于必然的法律如何协调的问题，生理学和动物学是无法解答的，因为在青蛙、兔子和猴子中我们只能观察到肌肉和神经的活动，而在人类中我们还加上了自觉的活动。

The scientific men and their disciples who suppose they are solving this question are like plasterers set to plaster one side of a church wall, who, in the absence of the chief superintendent of their work, should in the excess of their zeal plaster over the windows, and the holy images, and the woodwork, and the scaffolding, and rejoice that from the plasterers’ point of view everything was now so smooth and even.
那些认为自己能解决这个问题的科学家们及其追随者，就像被派去给教堂墙壁抹灰的泥水匠，当他们的主管不在场时，过度热衷于在窗户、圣像、木制品和脚手架上抹灰，欣喜地认为从泥水匠的角度来看，一切都变得如此平滑。