In his classic novel, The Pioneers, James Cooper has his hero

2023年12月7日发(作者：途胜现代)

In his classic novel, The Pioneers, James Cooper has his hero, a land

developer, take his cousin on a tour of the city he is building. He

describes the broad streets, rows of houses, a teeming metropolis.

詹姆斯·库珀在他的经典小说《拓荒者》中塑造了一个男主角——一个土地开发商，带着他的堂妹畅游在他建造的城市里。他描述着宽阔的马路，成排的房子，热闹的大城市。

But his cousin looks around bewildered. All she sees is a forest.

但是他的堂妹困惑地看着四周，入眼的只是一片森林。

“Where are the beauties and improvements which you were to show

me?” she asks.

“你告诉我的那些漂亮的东西和改造后的东西在哪呢？”她问。

He’s astonished she can’t see them. “Where! Why everywhere,” he

replies.

她看不到它们使他觉得很惊讶。“哪里！到处都是啊，”他回答道。

For though they are not really built on earth, he has built them in his

mind, and they are as concrete to him as if they were already constructed

and finished.

尽管它们没有真正的在土地上盖出来，是在他脑海中建设的，对他来说它们是真正的楼房好似它们已经完工了。

Cooper was illustrating a distinctly American trait, future-mindedness:

the ability to see the present from the vantage point of the future; the

freedom to feel unencumbered by the past and more emotionally attached to things to come. As Albert Einstein once said, “Life for the American is

always becoming, never being.”

库珀解释了美国人的一个明显的特质，超前思想：能根据未来的优势来看待现状；能自由的去感知事物且不被过去所牵绊，也能对将要到来的事物投入更多的感情。正如阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦曾经说过的，“美国人的生活总是在不断地改变着，而不是固定不变的。”