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The modern world firmly equates the intelligent person with the well-read person.
现代世界把有智慧的人与擅读书的人等同起来。
Reading books, a lot of books, has become the hallmark of brilliance as well, apparently, as the supreme gateway to understanding.
阅读书籍，大量的书籍，显然也成为了才华的标志，也是理解力的终极途径。
If we don’t read four of this year’s major prize winning books as well as maybe seven fascinating titles that have received ardent reviews in the Sunday supplements since March, then we’ll be condemned to guilt and shame.
如果我们没有阅读本年度的四本主要获奖书籍以及七本在自三月以来的星期日书评栏目中受到热烈评论的精彩的书籍，我们将被谴责为有罪和耻辱。
Yet amidst this pressure to eat our way through an ever-larger number of titles, we might pause to reflect on a fascinating aspect of the pre-modern world: this world never put people under any pressure to read very much at all.
然而，在这种我们必须要读越来越多书籍的压力下，我们可能需要停下来思考一下，前现代世界的一个迷人侧面：前现代社会从来没有给人们施加任何压力去大量阅读。
Reading was held to be extremely important, but the number of new books one read was entirely by the by. This wasn’t principally an economic point.
阅读被认为是极其重要的，但是读书的数量却完全不重要，这并非是经济的原因。
Books were very expensive of course, but this wasn’t really the issue.
诚然，书籍在当时是很昂贵的，但这并不是关键。
What mattered was to read a few books very well, not squander one’s attention promiscuously on a great number of volumes.
重要的是人们深刻研读好少数的书籍，而不是把注意力胡乱地浪费在书籍的数量上。
The premodern world directed us to read so little because it was obsessed by a question that modernity likes to dodge: what is the point of reading?
在前现代社会，人们读书的数量很少，因为当时人们专注于一个现代社会经常回避的问题：阅读的意义到底是什么？
And it had answers.
当时已经有了答案。
To take a supreme example, Christians and Muslims located the value of reading in a very specific and narrow goal: the attainment of holiness.
举一个极端的例子，基督徒和穆斯林把阅读的价值定位在一个非常具体的而狭窄的目标：达到圣洁。
To read was to try to approximate the mind of God.
读书就是为了试图接近上帝的思想。
In each case this meant that one book, and one book only - the Bible or the Koran - was held up as vastly and incomparably more important than any other.
在这两种情况下，这意味着有且只有一本书，即圣经或古兰经，被认为比任何其他书都更重要的多。
To read this book, repeatedly and with great attention, probably five or so pages every day, was thought more crucial than to rush through a whole library every week;
为了读这本书，反复地、全神贯注地每天五页左右，被认为是比每周快速浏览完整个图书馆更重要；
in fact reading widely would have been regarded with suspicion, because most other books would - to some extent - have to prove misleading and distracting.
事实上， 广泛阅读会被认为是可疑的，因为大多数其他书，在某种程度上，会被证明是误导和分散注意力的。
Similarly, in the Ancient Greek world, one was meant to focus in on a close knowledge of just two books: Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad, because these were deemed the perfect repository of the Greek code of honour and the best guides to action in military and civilian affairs.
同样 在古希腊世界中，人们被要求只关注两本书的知识，荷马的《奥德赛》和《伊利亚特》。因为它们被认为是希腊荣誉法典的完美宝库，也是军事和民事事务的最佳行动指南。
We can pick up some of this minimalist attitude to reading in early visual depictions of one of the heroes of Christian scholarship, St Jerome - who was by all accounts the supreme intellect of Christendom, a man who translated the Greek and Hebrew portions of the Bible into Latin, wrote a large number of commentaries on scripture and is now the patron saint of libraries and librarians.
我们可以在一位重要的基督教学者的画像中，找到一些这种极简主义的阅读态度，他就是圣杰罗姆 -他被所有人认为是基督教界的最高智慧，他将《圣经》的希腊语和希伯来语部分译成拉丁文，写了大量关于经文的注释，现在是图书馆和图书馆员的守护神。
But despite all his scholarly efforts, when it came to showing where and how St Jerome worked, one detail stands out: there are almost no books in his famous study.
但是尽管他在学术上鞠躬尽瘁，但在展示圣杰罗姆的工作地点和工作方式时，一个细节非常明显：在他著名的书房里，几乎没有书。
Strikingly, the most intelligent and thoughtful intellectual of the early church seems to have read fewer things than an average modern eight year old.
令人吃惊的是，做为早期教会中最聪明、最有思想的知识分子。他的阅读量似乎比现代平均8岁的孩子还少。
The modern world has dramatically parted ways with this minimalist ancient approach to reading.
现代世界已经大大地与这种极简的古代阅读方式渐行渐远。
We have adopted an Enlightenment mantra that runs in a very different direction, stating that there should be no limit to how much we read because, in answer to the question of why we do so, there is only one response that will ever be encompassing or ambitious enough: we read in order to know everything.
我们采用了一种启蒙性的阅读原则，它的指导方向非常不同，指出我们的阅读量不应受到限制，因为，当回答为什么我们要阅读这个问题时，只有一种答案足够全面、足够有雄心：我们阅读是为了了解一切。
But we can hazard an observation: this exhaustive approach to reading does not make us particularly happy.
但我们可以大胆地观察：这种追求全面的阅读方式并没有让我们特别快乐。
So in order to ease and simplify our lives, we might dare to ask a very old-fashioned question: what am I reading for?
因此，为了放松、简化我们的生活，我们不妨大胆地问一个非常老套的问题：我为什么阅读？
And this time, rather than answering ‘in order to know everything,’ we might parcel off a much more limited, focused and useful goal.
这一次，我们不是回答"为了了解一切"，而是划分出一个范围更小、更集中和更有用的目标。
We might - for example - decide on a new mantra to guide our reading henceforth: we might want to read in order to learn to be content. Nothing less - and nothing more.
例如，我们可以决定一个新的阅读指导原则：我们阅读目标是为了满足：不缺，也不滥。
With this new, far more targeted ambition in mind, much of the pressure to read constantly and randomly starts to fade.
心中有了这个新的，更有目的性的志向，阅读的压力逐渐的慢慢消退。
Once we know that we are reading to be content, we don’t need to chase every book published this season.
一旦我们了解了我们阅读的目的是为了满足，我们就不需要追逐这一季出版的每一本书。
We can zero in on titles that best explain what we deem to be the constituent parts of contentment.
我们可以集中精力阅读那些能够清晰解释、能让我们满足的内容的书籍。
So for example, we may need a few key books that will explain our psyches to us, that will teach us about how families work and how they might work better, that can take us through how to find a job we can love or how to develop the courage to develop our opportunities.
比如，我们可能需要几本重要的书籍：有的解释我们的心理，有的解释家庭的运行方式，以及如何更好地运行家庭，有的能教我们如何找到自己能够热爱的工作，或者如何建立能够让自己发展的勇气。
We’ll probably need some books that talk about friendship and love, sexuality and health.
我们可能需要一些讨论友谊和爱情，性和健康的书籍。
Some books that gently guide us to how to minimise regret and learn to die well.
我们可能需要一些能够温和地指导我们，如何最大限度地减少遗憾，并学会死得其所。
The more we understand what reading is for us, the more we can enjoy intimate relationships with a few works only.
我们越了解阅读对我们的意义，我们就越能享受与少数几本书成为挚友的快乐。
The truly well-read person isn’t the one who has read a gargantuan number of books, it’s someone who has let themselves be deeply shaped by just a few, very few well-chosen titles.
真正会读书的人不是读了大量书籍的人，而是让自己深深地被几本精选的书籍所塑造的人。
