适读人群 :广大读者
当后人回顾起革命**和宪法起草者时,他们不得不为这群人思想的光芒、政治的活力、成就的卓绝而肃然起敬。 The succeeding generations of Americans were unable to look back at the revolutionary leaders and constitution makers without being overawed by the brilliance of their thoughts, the creativity of their politics, and the sheer magnitude of their achievement. 每当回顾他们的历史,敬畏之情夹杂着强烈的失落感向我们袭来。这一信念与权力的交织、理性与政治的融合稍纵即逝,再也不可能重现美国了。 The awe that most of us feel when we look back at them is thus mingled with an acute sense of loss. Somehow for a brief moment ideas and power, intellectualism and politics, came together—— indeed were one with each other——in a way never again duplicated in American history.
他们的品格并非我们今天所理解的那种暗藏矛盾与缺陷的内在化的精神;相反,他们认为品格是一种外在的生活。 Theirs was not character as we today are apt to understand it, as the inner personality that contains hidden contradictions and flaws. Instead their idea of character was the outer life.
他们的个体性毋庸置疑,有时会呈现出一种英雄色彩和超凡**的古典姿态,但他们绝非个人主义者,他们为自己的社会属性而忧心忡忡。 They were individuals undoubtedly, sometimes assuming a classic pose of heroic and noble preeminence, but they were not individualists, men worried about their social identities.