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Now, what is the significance of life? What are we living and struggling for? If we are being educated merely to achieve distinction, to get a better job, to be more efficient, to have wider domination over others, then our lives will be shallow and empty. If we are being educated only to be scientists, to be scholars wedded to books, or specialists addicted to knowledge, then we shall be contributing to the destruction and misery of the world.
生命的意义是什么？我们活着是为了什么？我们奋斗又是为了什么呢？如果我们接受教育只是为了功成名就，找到一份更好的工作，变得更有效率，能够使唤更多的人，那么我们的生活就会变得肤浅而空洞。如果我们接受教育只是为了成为科学家，成为只会啃书本的学者或者沉溺于知识的专家，那么我们将给世界带来不幸，甚至会将世界推向毁灭。
Though there is a higher and wider significance to life, of what value is our education if we never discover it? We may be highly educated, but if we are without deep integration of thought and feeling, our lives are incomplete, contradictory and torn with many fears; and as long as education does not cultivate an integrated outlook on life, it has very little significance.
虽然生命的确有着一种更高、更广阔的意义，可如果我们从未发现这种意义，我们的教育又有什么价值呢？我们也许受过高等教育，但如果我们的思想和情感不能深刻地融为一体，我们的生活就是不完整的、矛盾的、被无数恐惧所撕裂的；只要教育还没有培养出一种整体性的人生观，它就没有多大意义。
In our present civilization we have divided life into so many departments that education has very little meaning, except in learning a particular technique or profession. Instead of awakening the integrated intelligence of the individual, education is encouraging him to conform to a pattern and so is hindering his comprehension of himself as a total process. To attempt to solve the many problems of existence at their respective levels, separated as they are into various categories, indicates an utter lack of comprehension.
在如今的文明世界里，我们已经把生活分成了如此之多的部分，以至于教育除了能让我们学习一门特定技术或职业技能之外，便没有多大意义了。教育并没有唤醒个体完整的智慧，反而鼓励他去遵从某种模式，由此便妨碍了他把自己作为一个整体性的过程加以了解。试图在每个问题各自的层面、分门别类地去解决生活中的诸多问题——这表明了我们完全缺乏了解。
The individual is made up of different entities, but to emphasize the differences and to encourage the development of a definite type leads to many complexities and contradictions. Education should bring about the integration of these separate entities — for without integration, life becomes a series of conflicts and sorrows.
个体是由不同的存在部分所组成的，然而强调它们的差异，并且鼓励发展某个特定类型的部分，就会导致诸多的复杂与矛盾。教育应该使这些分离的存在部分融为一体，因为如果不融为一体，生活就会变成一连串的冲突和悲伤。
Of what value is it to be trained as lawyers if we perpetuate litigation? Of what value is knowledge if we continue in our confusion? What significance has technical and industrial capacity if we use it to destroy one another? What is the point of our existence if it leads to violence and utter misery? Though we may have money or are capable of earning it, though we have our pleasures and our organized religions, we are in endless conflict.
如果我们的诉讼永无休止，那么把我们培养成律师又有什么用？如果我们还是继续困惑，那么知识又有什么价值？如果科技和工业的力量只是被我们用来摧毁彼此的话，它们的意义又何在？如果我们的生活带来的是暴力和彻底的不幸，那它又有什么意义？虽然我们也许很有钱或者有能力赚钱，虽然我们有着自己的快乐和组织化的宗教，但我们却依然活在无止境的冲突中。
We must distinguish between the personal and the individual. The personal is the accidental; and by the accidental I mean the circumstances of birth, the environment in which we happen to have been brought up, with its nationalism, superstitions, class distinctions and prejudices. The personal or accidental is but momentary, though that moment may last a lifetime; and as the present system of education is based on the personal, the accidental, the momentary, it leads to perversion of thought and the inculcation of self-defensive fears.
我们必须分清个人与个体。个人是一种偶然性；我所说的偶然性指的是出生的背景，我们凑巧在其中生活长大的环境，以及那个环境所包含的民族主义、迷信、阶级区分和偏见。个人或偶然性只是短暂的片刻，虽然这个短暂的片刻也许会持续一生的时间；由于如今的教育体系是建立在个人、偶然性和短暂之上的，所以它导致了思想的扭曲反常，并且灌输了自我防卫性的恐惧。
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security, and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear. Such a training must inevitably bring confusion and misery to ourselves and to the world, for it creates in each individual those psychological barriers which separate and hold him apart from others.
我们所有人一直都被教育、被环境训练着去寻求一己私利和安全感，去为自己奋斗。虽然我们用各种动听的言辞来掩盖它，然而我们都是在这个体系中接受教育——这个体系建立在剥削和因贪婪而生的恐惧之上——然后去从事各种职业的。而这种训练不可避免地会给我们和这个世界带来混乱与不幸，因为它在每个人心中制造了心理上的屏障，这种屏障把他和其他人分离开来，并维持这种分离、孤立的状态。
Education is not merely a matter of training the mind. Training makes for efficiency, but it does not bring about completeness. A mind that has merely been trained is the continuation of the past, and such a mind can never discover the new. That is why, to find out what is right education, we will have to inquire into the whole significance of living.
教育不仅仅是训练头脑。训练提升了效率，却没有造就人的完整。一个仅仅接受训练的头脑只是过去的延续，这样的头脑永远无法发现新事物。所以，要发现什么是正确的教育，我们必须探询生活的全部意义。
To most of us, the meaning of life as a whole is not of primary importance, and our education emphasizes secondary values, merely making us proficient in some branch of knowledge. Though knowledge and efficiency are necessary, to lay chief emphasis on them only leads to conflict and confusion.
对我们大多数人而言，完整生活的意义并不是头等重要的事，我们的教育强调那些次要的价值，它只是让我们变得精通于知识的某个分支。虽然知识和效率是必需的，但首要强调这些东西却只会带来冲突与混乱。
There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?
有一种由爱所激发的效率，它远远超越了野心带来的效率，也更为强大；然而如果没有爱——爱才能带来对于生活的完整了解——效率只会滋生出残忍无情。这难道不是全世界实际在发生的事吗？我们现在的教育是与工业化和战争相配套的，它以发展效率为首要目标；而我们则陷入了这个残酷竞争和彼此摧毁的机器中。如果教育导致了战争，如果它教导我们去毁灭或被毁灭，它难道不就已经彻底失败了吗？
文源:与神对话读书会