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  3. Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels

Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels

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问题     Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one’s perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.
    Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of "the pleasure of taking pains". The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.
    We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without diffculty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.
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答案 努力乃其实质。除了征服须毕生为之努力的困难外，没有任何快乐可言。诚如叶芝所言，除了不可为的事情外，我们一生所获得的满足有多大，取决于我们所选择的困难有多强。罗伯特.弗罗斯特在谈及“承受痛苦时的快乐”时，其意相近。社会上宣扬的那种幸福观的致命缺陷就在于声称幸福是无需努力即可获得的。 我们即使在玩游戏的时候也需要有困难。因为没有难度，就谈不上游戏。所谓游戏，就是为了从某事中取乐而使之变得艰难的一种方式。制订游戏规则实则是任意地施加难度。若有人破坏了游戏的乐趣，通常是因为他拒绝按规则进行。如果可以自由随意地改变规则，你会更容易地赢得棋赛，但是，乐趣源于在规则内取胜。没有了难度，也就没有了乐趣。
解析 <1>Effort is the gist of it. it这里指的是the high，即崇高的事物。
<2>life-engaging difficulties指那些让人一生都要为之奋斗的难事。
<3>short of the impossible short of可表示“少于，不及；缺乏，不足；除……之外”。此处取最后一层含义较符合上下文。the impossible指不可能做到的事。合在一起，意为“除了那些不可做到的事外”。
<4>Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms．．．something like这里相当于somewhat。in．．．terms或in terms Of．．．这里表示“用……的思维方法”，“按照”。
<5>the advertised version of happiness指一个社会中宣扬的幸福观。
<6>A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it．it指something。要使某东西能给人带来乐趣，就要使它变得难以获得。
<7>When someone ruins the fun，he always does so by refusing to play by the rules此句不宜按字面译，因为此句前后两部分实则带有因果意味，可译成“一个人破坏了乐趣，一般都是因为他不按规则玩”。
<8>at your pleasure随便，随意
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