Treating Others Liberally

It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than the offenses of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them, find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.

令人奇怪的是，和别人的过错比起来，我们自己所犯过错似乎并不是那样的不可原谅。我猜想，其原因应该是我们完全清楚是什么导致了犯错，因此能够找到理由原谅自己，却找不到理由原谅他人。我们没有正视自己的不足之处，当我们陷入困境而被迫正视它们的时候，我们也会很容易就放自己一马。就我所知，我们这样做是正确的。这些缺点是我们自身的一部分，我们必须接受这样的自己——一个并非十全十美的组合体。

But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves fro which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has never told not one, but a hundred?

但是当我们对他人作评价的时候，我们不是凭自己的真心来评判别人，而是以一种自我建立的形象为基础来评判他人，这种自我形象完全去除了在世人眼中与自己的虚荣心或者名誉相冲突的事物。举一个简单的例子：当看出别人在说谎时，我们是多么地蔑视他啊！但是，谁敢说自己从未说过谎？有的人撒的谎还不少。
There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same. For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind, the world would consider me a monster of depravity. The knowledge that these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others. It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.

人和人之间没什么大的不同。他们皆是组合体——伟大与渺小，善良与邪恶，高尚与卑劣。有的人个性较强，或者机遇较多，因而在这个或那个方面，他们能够更自由地发挥自己的天资，但是人类的潜能却都是一样的。对我来说，我认为自己并不比大多数人好一些或者差一些，但是我知道，假如我贯彻执行了我生命中每一个行为和每一个掠过我脑海的想法的话，世人将会把我视为一个道德败坏的怪物。这种认识——每个人都会有这样的怪念头——应当能够对我们产生启发：宽容自己，也要宽容他人。假如因此我们可以在评价他人时不太严苛——即使是世间最杰出和最令人尊敬的人，而且，假如我们也因此不对自己自视过高，那就挺好的。