But the state no less than art dipped into this current of the timeless to find rest in it from the burden and the greed of the moment.
然而，国家乃至艺术，也投入这超时间的洪流中，以便解除目前的负荷和热望，以便憩息一下。
And any people--just as, incidentally, also any individual--is worth only as much as it is able to press upon its experiences the stamp of the eternal; for thus it is, as it were, desecularized and shows its unconscious inward convictions of the relativity of time and of the true, that is metaphysical, significance of life.
甚至一个民族，——何况是一个人，——究有多少价值，也全视乎它能在自己的经验上打下多少永垂不朽的印记；因为，仿佛是这样，它才能超凡脱俗，这样，它才显出它对时间之相对性，对人生之真谛，对人生之哲理的无意识的内心信仰。
The opposite of this happens when a people begins to comprehend itself historically and to smash the mythical works that surround it. At that point we generally find a decisive secularization, a break with the unconscious metaphysics of its previous existence, together with all its ethical consequences.
如果一个民族开始从历史上认识自己，并且摧毁它周围的神话堡垒，那就会发生相反的情况：这往往带来一种断然的世俗倾向，使它背弃了往昔生活的无意识的哲理，及其一切道德结论。
Greek art and pre-eminently Greek tragedy delayed above all the destruction of myth. One hadto destroy tragedy, too, in order to be able to live away from the soil of home, uninhibited, in the wilderness of thought, custom, and deed.
希腊艺术，尤其是希腊悲剧，首先阻止了神话的毁灭；所以必须毁灭了这两者，才能脱离故土，在思想、习俗、行为的荒漠中无拘无束地生活。
Even now this metaphysical drive still tries to create for itself a certainly attenuated form of transfiguration, in the Socratism of science that strives for life; but on the lower steps, this same drive led only to a feverish search that gradually lost itself in a pandemonium of myths and superstitions that were collected from all over and piled up in confusion: nevertheless the Greek sat among them with an unstilled heart until he learned to mask this fever with Greek cheerfulness and Greek frivolity, becoming a Graeculus [A contemptuous term for a Greek.], or he numbed his mind completely in some dark Oriental superstition.
甚到那时，这种超脱的冲动，还努力为自己创造一种崇拜，即便是衰弱的崇拜：那是力求生存的科学苏格拉底主义；但是，在其较低阶段，这种冲动只能引向热烈的探索，而逐渐消失在各处积累的神话和迷信之地狱中：希腊人端坐在这地狱中央，依依不舍，直至他晓得，象格里库卢斯（Griculus）那样，以希腊的乐观和希腊的无忧来掩饰自己的狂热，或者以某些阴森的东方迷信来完全麻醉自己。
Since the reawakening of Alexandrian-Roman antiquity in the fifteenth century we have approximated this state in the most evident manner, after a long interlude that is difficult to describe.
自从亚历山德里亚—罗马古学，在难以说明的长期中断之后，终于在十五世纪复兴以来，我们今日触目惊心地接近了这种情况。
On the heights we encounter the same overabundant lust for knowledge, the same unsatisfied delight in discovery, the same tremendous secularization, and beside it a homeless roving, a greedy crowding around foreign tables, a frivolous deification of the present, or a dully dazed retreat--everything sub specie saeculi [Under the aspect of the times, or the spirit of the age.], of the "present age."
And these same symptoms allow us to infer the same lack at the heart of this culture, the destruction of myth.
同样盛旺的求知欲，同样不知餍足的发明之乐趣，同样急剧的世俗倾向，已经达到了高峰；加以一种无家可归的彷徨，一种挤入别人宴席的贪馋，一种对现在的轻浮崇拜，或者对当代，对一切subspeciesaeculi（属于世俗范围）事物的麻木不仁的疏远；——这些朕兆，使人想到这种文化之核心中有同样的缺点，想到神话的毁灭。
It scarcely seems possible to be continuously successful at transplanting a foreign myth without irreparably damaging the tree by this transplantation. In one case it may perhaps be strong and healthy enlugh to eliminate this foreign element in a terrible fight; usually, however, it must consume itself, sick and withered or in diseased superfoetation.
移植一种外国神话，不断成功，而不致无可挽回地伤害树木，似乎是绝不可能的；这颗树有时也许是相当壮健，靠惨淡斗争足以再度排除一切异己因素，可是在惯常的情况下，它定必萎弱不振，或者根枯叶茂。
We think so highly of the pure and vigorous core of the German character that we dare to expect of it above all others this elimination of the forcibly implanted foreign elements, and consider it possible that the German spirit will return to itself.
我们十分看重德国民族性的纯粹而强健的核心，所以我们敢于期望它排除那些勉强移入的异己因素；我们认为，德国精神将有可能从新作自我反省。
Some may suppose that this spirit must begin its fight with the elimination of everything Romanic.If so they may recognize an external preparation and encouragement in the victorious fortitude and bloody glory of the last war; but one must still seek the inner necessity in the ambition to be always worthy of the sublime champions on this way, Luther as well as our great artists and poets.
或许，不少人认为，德国精神的斗争必须从排除罗马因素开始；从而，他们在最近这次战争的胜利战果和浴血光荣中，看到这种斗争的一点表面准备和鼓舞；然而，在竞争热情中，必须找到一种内在要求，才能始终无愧于这条路上的崇高对手，无愧于路德以及我们的伟大艺术家和诗人们。
But let him never believe that he could fight similar fights without the gods of his house, or his mythical home, without "bringing back" all German things!
但是，您切莫以为：没有我们的家神，没有神话的家乡，无须“恢复”德国一切遗产，也可能参与这场斗争。
And if the German should hesitantly look around for a leader who might bring him back again into his long lost home whose ways and paths he scarcely knows anymore, let him merely listen to the ecstatically luring call of the Dionysian bird that hovers above him and wants to point the way for him.
如果德国人畏缩不前，环顾四围，要找一个引路人领他回到久别的故乡，因为他再也不认识故乡的道路；那未，他只须倾听酒神的灵禽的快乐迷人的啼声，它正在天上翱翔，愿意给他指点前途。