marriage was contracted by convention either by the respective families, or by a marriage broker, or without the help of such intermediaries; it was concluded on the basis of social considerations, and love was supposed to develop once the marriage had been concluded. In the last few generations the concept of romantic love has become almost universal in the Western world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely absent, to a vast extent people are in search of “romantic love,” of the personal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love must have greatly enhanced the importance of the object as against the importance of the function.
导致“爱不需要学习”这种看法的第二个前提是：人们想当然地认为，爱的问题在于“对象”，而不在于“能力”。他们认为“爱”是简单的，而找到爱或被爱的合适对象却很困难。造成这种态度有几个原因，它们的根源在于现代社会的发展。其中一个原因是：在20世纪，对“爱的对象”的选择发生了重大变化。在维多利亚时代，如同在很多传统文化中一样，一般说来，爱情并不是一种最终可能会导致婚姻的自然产生的个人体验。恰恰相反，婚姻是按传统习俗订好的，或通过双方家庭或通过一个媒人，也可能不需要这类中间人的帮助；婚姻是在考虑社会需要的基础上决定的，一旦结了婚，爱情就自然发展起来。在过去几代人中，浪漫爱情的观念已在西方世界变得极为普遍。在美国，虽然传统性质的考虑并未完全消除，但很大程度上人们却在寻求“浪漫爱情”，寻求导致婚姻的那种个人的爱情体验。这种自由恋爱的新概念一定大大增加了“对象”相对于“功能”的重要性。
Closely related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporary culture. Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man’s happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl — and for the woman an attractive man — are the prizes they are after. “Attractive” usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; oday the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious — today he has to be social and tolerant — in order to be an attractive “package.”At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one’s own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same timeshould want me, considering my
overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.
同这一因素密切相关的是当代文化特有的另一个特点。我们的整个文化是以购买欲和互惠交换的理念为基础的。现代人的幸福在于看着商店橱窗时的兴奋，在于用现金或分期付款购的方式购买所有他们买得起的东西。于是，他（或她）也以同样的方式去看人。对男人来说，有魅力的女孩子是他要追求的对象，而有魅力的男人对于女人也同样如此。“有魅力”通常意味着在个性市场上那些人们喜欢并追求的一组优秀的品质。特别使人有魅力的东西，无论是精神上还是物质上，都是由时代的风尚所决定的。在20年代，一个抽烟、喝酒、泼辣、性感的女孩是有魅力的；今天的风尚更多地要求贤惠和娇羞。19世纪末和本世纪初，男人必须雄心勃勃、敢作敢为才能称得上有魅力，而如今男人则必须善于交际、宽容大度。无论如何，通常只有在这些人性化的商品在自身有可能进行交换的情况下，才会培养起爱上某人的感觉。我一心要做一笔交易；对象不但应有合意的社会价值，同时考虑到我本人公开和隐蔽的资产和潜在能力，对象也应该需要我。这样，当两个人考虑到自身交换价值的局限，认为自己已经在市场上找到了最好的对象时，他们就开始恋爱了。像购买不动产一样，能发展的潜力在这种交易中常常起着相当大的作用。在一个市场导向占主导地位，物质上的成功具有突出价值的文化中，人的爱情关系遵循商品和劳动力市场支配交换的同一模式，也就不足为奇了。
The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of “falling” in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of “standing” in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all of this, in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for
proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.
导致爱无需学习这一看法的第三个错误，在于将“爱上”一个人的初始体验和“爱”一个人（或不妨说是“处于”爱一个人）的永久性状态混为一谈。如果两个素昧平生的人（我们都是素昧平生的）突然让他们之间的那堵墙倒塌，感觉越来越亲密，最后感觉像一个人一样，这种像一个人一样的时刻是一生中最令人愉快、最令人激动的经历之一。对于那些与世隔绝、孤独而没有爱的人来说，它更是美妙和神奇的。这种突然亲近的奇迹，如果与性的吸引和性的完美结合起来，或者为性的吸引和性的完美所引发，常常会变得很容易。但这种爱情自身的性质决定了它是不会长久的。两个人相互熟识了，他们的亲近关系也就越来越失去了其神奇性，直到最后他们的敌对、他们的失望，他们的相互厌烦把所剩不多的最初的激情也扼杀掉了。然而，开始时他们对此却一无所知：事实上，他们把彼此间的极度迷恋，相互为对方“疯狂”的状态当成了强烈爱情的明证，而实际上这也许只是证明了他们以前是多么的孤独。
This attitude — that nothing is easier than to love — has continued to be the prevalent idea about love in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better — or they would give up the activity. Since the latter is impossible in the case of love, there seems to be only one adequate way to overcome the failure of love — to examine the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the meaning of love. 没有比爱更容易的事了——这种态度一直是有关爱的流行看法，尽管大量的证据说明事实恰恰相反。几乎没有什么活动、什么事业像爱情那样带着如此巨大的希望与期待开始，而又如此经常以失败告终。如果从事任何一件其他的活动出现这种情况，人们会渴望知道失败的原因，渴望学会怎样才能做得更好——或者他们会放弃这种活动。既然在爱的问题上不可能选择放弃，看来只有一种合适的方式来克服爱的失败了——这就是研究失败的原因，并进而探讨爱的意义。 The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.
第一步要做的是要意识到，正如生活是一门艺术一样，“爱”也是一门艺术；如果我们想要学会如何去爱，我们就必须像学习其他任何一门艺术，如音乐、绘画、木工或者药学、工程那样，采取同样的方式。
What are the necessary steps in learning any art?
学习任何一门艺术的必要步骤是什么呢？
The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts; one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obviousfailures, in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love, success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.
学习一门艺术的过程可以很方便地分为两个部分：一是掌握理论；二是精于实践。如果我想学医，就必须首先了解有关人体和各种疾病的事实。但即使我掌握了所有这些理论知识，我在医术上仍然是无法胜任的。只有经过大量的实践，直到最后我的理论知识的成果和实践的成果融为一体，形成了直觉（这是掌握任何一门技艺的本质），我才能成为这门技艺的一位大师。但是除了学习理论和进行实践外，精通任何技艺还必须有第三种因素，即对这门技艺的掌握必须是头等大事；世上再没有比这门技艺更重要的事了。这一点适用于音乐、药学、木工，也同样适用于爱。在我们的文化中，人们尽管在爱的方面明显地屡遭失败，却仍很少去学习这门技艺，其原因也许就在这里：虽然内心深处都渴望爱，却认为其他任何事情都比爱更重要，如成功、声望、金钱、权力；我们几乎把所有的精力都用来学习怎样去实现这些目标，而几乎不花费任何精力来学习爱的艺术。 Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige,and that love,
which“only”profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend much energy on?
这会不会是因为人们认为只有那些能用来赢得金钱和声望的东西才值得学习，而爱“仅仅”有益于心灵，却不能带来现代意义上的收益，所以就成了我们没有权利为之耗费过多精力的一种奢侈品呢？