秋末夏初
Tom is my friend. He eats a lot of healthy food. For breakfast, he likes eggs, bread and milk. For lunch, he likes fish, meat, vegetables and rice.And for dinner, he has chicken, tomatoes and noodles. He likes French fries very much, but he doesn’t like ice cream or dessert at all.
追风的夕夕
1. Political economy or economics is a study of mankind inthe ordinary business of life; it examines that part ofindividual and social action which is most closely connected withthe attainment and with the use of the material requisites ofwellbeing.Thus it is on the one side a study of wealth; and on theother, and more important side, a part of the study of man. Forman's character has been moulded by his every-day work, and thematerial resources which he thereby procures, more than by anyother influence unless it be that of his religious ideals; andthe two great forming agencies of the world's history have beenthe religious and the economic. Here and there the ardour of themilitary or the artistic spirit has been for a while predominant:but religious and economic influences have nowhere been displacedfrom the front rank even for a time; and they have nearly alwaysbeen more important than all others put together. Religiousmotives are more intense than economic, but their direct actionseldom extends over so large a part of life. For the business bywhich a person earns his livelihood generally fills his thoughtsduring by far the greater part of those hours in which his mindis at its best; during them his character is being formed by theway in which he uses his faculties in his work, by the thoughtsand the feelings which it suggests, and by his relations to hisassociates in work, his employers or his employees.And very often the influence exerted on a person's characterby the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, thanthat exerted by the way in which it is earned. It may make littledifference to the fulness of life of a family whether its yearlyincome is £1000 or £5000; but it makes a very great differencewhether the income is £30 or £150: for with £150 the family has,with £30 it has not, the material conditions of a complete life.It is true that in religion, in the family affections and infriendship, even the poor may find scope for many of thosefaculties which are the source of the highest happiness. But theconditions which surround extreme poverty, especially in denselycrowded places, tend to deaden the higher faculties. Those whohave been called the Residuum of our large towns have littleopportunity for friendship; they know nothing of the decenciesand the quiet, and very little even of the unity of family life;and religion often fails to reach them. No doubt their physical,mental, and moral ill-health is partly due to other causes thanpoverty: but this is the chief cause.And, in addition to the Residuum, there are vast numbers ofpeople both in town and country who are brought up withinsufficient food, clothing, and house-room; whose education isbroken off early in order that they may go to work for wages; whothenceforth are engaged during long hours in exhausting toil withimperfectly nourished bodies, and have therefore no chance ofdeveloping their higher mental faculties. Their life is notnecessarily unhealthy or unhappy. Rejoicing in their affectionstowards God and man, and perhaps even possessing some naturalrefinement of feeling, they may lead lives that are far lessincomplete than those of many, who have more material wealth.But, for all that, their poverty is a great and almost unmixedevil to them. Even when they are well, their weariness oftenamounts to pain, while their pleasures are few; and when sicknesscomes, the suffering caused by poverty increases tenfold. And,though a contented spirit may go far towards reconciling them tothese evils, there are others to which it ought not to reconcilethem. Overworked and undertaught, weary and careworn, withoutquiet and without leisure, they have no chance of making the bestof their mental faculties.Although then some of the evils which commonly go withpoverty are not its necessary consequences; yet, broadlyspeaking, "the destruction of the poor is their poverty," and thestudy of the causes of poverty is the study of the causes of thedegradation of a large part of mankind.2. Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance ofnature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in oldentime. The dignity of man was proclaimed by the Christianreligion: it has been asserted with increasing vehemence duringthe last hundred years: but, only through the spread of educationduring quite recent times, are we beginning to feel the fullimport of the phrase. Now at last we are setting ourselvesseriously to inquire whether it is necessary that there should beany so-called "lower classes" at all: that is, whether there needbe large numbers of people doomed from their birth to hard workin order to provide for others the requisites of a refined andcultured life; while they themselves are prevented by theirpoverty and toil from having any share or part in that life.The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually beextinguished, derives indeed much support from the steadyprogress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.The steam-engine has relieved them of much exhausting anddegrading toil; wages have risen; education has been improved andbecome more general; the railway and the printing-press haveenabled members of the same trade in different parts of thecountry to communicate easily with one another, and to undertakeand carry out broad and far-seeing lines of policy; while thegrowing demand for intelligent work has caused the artisanclasses to increase so rapidly that they now outnumber thosewhose labour is entirely unskilled. A great part of the artisanshave ceased to belong to the "lower classes" in the sense inwhich the term was originally used; and some of them already leada more refined and noble life than did the majority of the upperclasses even a century ago.This progress has done more than anything else to givepractical interest to the question whether it is reallyimpossible that all should start in the world with a fair chanceof leading a cultured life, free from the pains of poverty andthe stagnating influences of excessive mechanical toil; and thisquestion is being pressed to the front by the growing earnestnessof the age. The question cannot be fully answered by economicscience. For the answer depends partly on the moral and politicalcapabilities of human nature, and on these matters the economisthas no special means of information: he must do as others do, andguess as best he can. But the answer depends in a great measureupon facts and inferences, which are within the province ofeconomics; and this it is which gives to economic studies theirchief and their highest interest.3. It might have been expected that a science, which dealswith questions so vital for the wellbeing of mankind, would haveengaged the attention of many of the ablest thinkers of everyage, and be now well advanced towards maturity. But the fact isthat the number of scientific economists has always been smallrelatively to the difficulty of the work to be done; so that thescience is still almost in its infancy. One cause of this is thatthe bearing of economics on the higher wellbeing of man has beenoverlooked. Indeed, a science which has wealth for itssubject-matter, is often repugnant at first sight to manystudents; for those who do most to advance the boundaries ofknowledge, seldom care much about the possession of wealth forits own sake.
