It is a human world, but one that is human in ways no one expected. The image it reveals is not the worn and battered face that stares from Leonardo's self-portrait much less the one that stares, bleary and uninspired, every morning from the bathroom mirror. These are the faces of history. It is, rather, the image of an eternally playful and eternally youthful power that makes order whether order is there or not and that having made one order is quite capable of putting it aside and creating an entirely different or the way a child might build one structure from a set of blocks and then without malice and purely in the spirit of play demolish it and begin again. It is an image of the power that made humanity possible in the first place.
现代文化是一个显示人的特点的世界，但又不是人们想象的那种模样。它所表现的形象不是列奥纳多自画像上那种倦怠憔悴的面容，更不是每天早晨从浴室镜子里见到的模模糊糊、平平淡淡的面孔。这些都是历史的本来面目了。现代文化是一种永远具有玩耍性而又朝气蓬勃的力量;这种力量可以创造出某种秩序，不管这种秩序是否客观存在于现实世界之中;而且，在创造出一种秩序后，又完全有可能打破这种秩序，再创一个完全不同的新秩 序，就像一个小孩玩积木时已经拼造出一种结构后又毫无恶意地以纯粹的玩耍态度拆散重拼一样。这就是它使人类显示其特点的形象。
The banks of the nineteenth century tended to be neoclassic structures of marble or granite faced with ponderous rows of columns. They made a statement" "We are solid. We are permanent. We are as reliable as history. Your money is safe in our vaults."
十九世纪的银行一般都是以大理石或花岗石砌成的新古典式建筑，正面装饰着一排排粗重的廊柱。它们向世人宣告："我们坚不可摧;我们永不衰朽;我们像历史一样令人信赖。您的钱储放在我们的地下保险库里可保绝对完全。"
Today's banks are airy structures of steel and glass, or they are store-fronts with slot-machinelike terminals, or trailers parked on the lots of suburban shopping malls.
今天的银行却是一些钢架玻璃结构的虚无飘渺的建筑，或是一些门前装有像自动售货机一样的计算机终端设备的商店门面，或是一些停放在城郊商业中心停车场上的挂车式活动房屋。
The vaults have been replaced by magnetic tapes. In a computer, money is sequences of digital signals endlessly recorded, erased, processed, and reprocessed, and endlessly modified by other computers. The statement of modern banks is "We are abstract like art and almost invisible like the Crystal Palace. If we exist at all, we exist as an airy medium in which your transactions are completed and your wealth increased."
原先的地下保险库如今也换成了磁带来替代其职能。钱在电脑中变成了一系列数字信号，这些数字信号要不断地经过其他电脑一次次地录入、删除、处理、再处理并不断加以修改。现代银行向世人宣告的是："我们像艺术般的抽象，几乎像水晶宫般的无形。假如我们还存在的话，我们也只是以一种虚无飘渺的媒介而存在，通过这种媒介您们的交易得以进行，您们的财富得以增值。"
That, perhaps, establishes the logical limit of the modern aesthetic. If so, the limit is a long way ahead, but it can be made out, just barely, through the haze over the road. As surely as nature is being swallowed up by the mind, the banks, you might say, are disappearing through their own skylights.
也许这就可以成为现代美学发展的逻辑上的极限。如果这样的话，这个极限点距离我们还有一段较长的路程，但其模糊的轮廓透过路上弥漫着的薄雾已依稀可辨。正如物质世界的客观现实逐渐消失于人们的头脑中一样，可以说，现代银行也正从自己的天窗中逐渐消失。