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But if the pleasure of learning is universal, why are there so many dull, incurious people in the world?
既然学习的乐趣是普遍存在的，那为什么世界上仍有那么多愚钝的、对世事麻木不仁的人呢？
It is because they were made dull, by bad teaching, by isolation, by surrender to routine, sometimes, too, by the pressure of hard work and poverty,
这是因为他们被糟糕的教学方法，被孤立，被对常规的妥协，有时也被辛苦工作和贫困的压力，
or by the toxin of riches, with all their ephemeral and trivial delights.
或被财富带来的短暂又低劣的欢愉对他们的侵蚀变得沉闷无趣了。
With luck, resolution and guidance, however, the human mind can survive not only poverty but even wealth.
然而，如果有了好的机遇、决心和引导，人的思想不仅能够克服贫困的压力，而且能够战胜财富的诱惑。
This pleasure is not confined to learning from textbooks, which are too often tedious.
这种乐趣不会局限于学习那些通常过于单调乏味的教科书。
But it does include learning from books.
但它确实包括通过书本进行学习。
Sometimes, when I stand in a big library like the Library of Congress, or Butler Library at Columbia,
有时，当我站在一个诸如国会图书馆，或是哥伦比亚的巴特勒图书馆这样的大图书馆里，
and gaze round me at the millions of books, I feel a sober, earnest delight hard to convey except by a metaphor.
环顾四周上百万册的书籍时，我就会感觉到有一种严肃而热切的乐趣，这种乐趣除了用比喻很难表达出来。
These are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive in the shelves.
这些书并不是一堆毫无生气的纸堆，而是活跃在书架上的思想家。
From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing,
每一本书都传出它们各自无言的心声，就像我们无法听到电波在我们的听觉范围以外发出的浩瀚声息一样，
and just as the touch of a button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes,
就像触摸我们的立体音响的按钮会使整个房间充满音乐一样，打开其中的一卷书，
one can call into range a voice far distant in time and pace, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.
你就可以换回一个在时空上遥远的声音，头对头、心贴心地听它讲话。
