英語翻譯
There are two sorts of obscurity that you find in writers.One is due to negligence and the other to willfulness.People often write obscurely because they have never taken the trouble to learn to write clearly.This sort of obscurity you find too often in modern philosophers,in science,and even in literary critics.Here it is indeed strange.You would have thought that men who passed their lives in the study of the great masters of literature would be sufficiently sensitive to the beauty of language to write if not beautifully at least with perspicuity.Yet you will find in their works sentences that you must read twice to discover the sense.Often you can only guess at it,for the writers have evidently not said what they intended.
Another cause of obscurity is that the writer is himself not quite sure of his meaning.He has a vague impression of what he wants to say,but has not,either from lack of mental power or from laziness,exactly formulated it in his mind and it is natural enough that he should not find a precise expression for a confused idea.This is due largely to the fact that many writers think,not before,but as they write.The pen originates the thought.The disadvantage of this,and indeed it is a danger against which the author must be always on his guard,is that there is a sort of magic in the written word.The idea acquires substance by taking on a visible nature and then stands in the way of its own clarification.But this sort of obscurity merges very easily into the willful.Some writers who do not think clearly are inclined to suppose that their thoughts have a significance greater than at first sight appears.It is flattering to believe that they are too profound to be expressed so clearly that all who run may read,and very naturally it does not occur to such writers that the fault is with their own minds which have not the faculty of precise reflection.Here again the magic of the written words obtains.It is very easy to persuade oneself that a phrase that one does not quite understand may mean a great deal more than one realizes.From this there is only little way to go to fall into the habit of setting down one’s impression in all their original vagueness.There is another form of willful obscurity that masquerades as aristocratic exclusiveness.The author wraps his meaning in mystery so that the vulgar shall not participate in it.His soul is a secret garden into which the elect may penetrate only after overcoming a number of perilous obstacles.But this kind of obscurity is not only pretentious; it is shortsighted.For time plays it an odd trick.If the sense is meager time reduces it to a meaningless verbiage that no one thinks of reading.