新世纪大学英语综合教程3课后翻译原题.docVIP

PAGE PAGE 1 What is genuine friendship? Some classical views may help us understand the notionof friendship more clearly. Aristotle distinguishes genuine friendship from two other forms: one based on mutual utility and the other on pleasure. While the ground (4) for the latter two forms of friendship is closely related to material benefits, short-term interests or age, genuine friendship occurs only between those who are similar in their goodness. Cicero, another ancient scholar, believes that true friends actions and lives should leave no question as to their honor, purity, equity and liberality. Whether or not one possesses any superiority over the other, both must regard themselves as equals of the other and try their best to preservethe friendship. Moreover, true friends are bound together, as a friend is said to be a mirror (11) in which you may perceive and know yourself. When virtuousfriends are bonded together by a commitment to the good, they can recognize each others moral excellence and fulfill their self-improvement. Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat ignoble. The best way to overcome it - so at least it seems to me - is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river – small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visib