金钱与爱情

金钱与爱情
谈婚论嫁是为了金钱还是爱情一直是人们的热门话题。诚然，每个人都渴望无关金钱的真爱，但青蛙变成王子、灰姑娘当了王后的结局谁不相信呢？且不管正确与否，本文作者所持观点颇为特别而新鲜。

　　When the Romantic Movement was still in its first fervor,1 it was a common matter of debate whether people should marry for love or for money. The young people concerned usually favored love, and their parents usually favored money. In the novels of the period the dilemma was felicitously solved by the discovery, on the last page, that the apparently penniless heroine was really a great heiress.2 But in real life young men who hoped for this denouement were apt to be disappointed.3 Prudent parents, while admitting that their daughters should marry for love, took care that all the young men they met should be rich. This method was sometimes very successful; it was adopted, for example, by my maternal grandfather, who had a large number of romantic daughters, none of whom married badly.

　　In these days of psychology the matter no longer looks so simple as it did eighty years ago. We realize now that money may be the cause, or part of the cause, of quite genuine love; of this there are notable examples in history. Benjamin Disraeli, who became Lord Beaconsfield,4 was, in his youth, poor and struggling and passionately ambitious. He married a rich widow, much older than himself, and considered by the world to be rather silly. Owing to her, he was able to make his career a success. A cynical world naturally assumed that he loved her money better than he loved her, but in this the world was mistaken;5 throughout the whole of their married life, he was deeply and genuinely devoted to her. I do not suppose he would have loved her if she had been poor when he first knew her, but the gratitude which he felt for the help which he owed to her kindly interest in him easily developed into a sincere affection. A great deal of affection is based upon the fact that its object is a help in realizing the purposes of the person who feels it.6 Men in whom ambition is the leading passion are likely to love women who assist them in their career, and it would be very shallow psychology to suppose that the love is not real because it has its instinctive root in self-interest.7

　　An even more notable instance than Disraeli is Mohammed.8 As everyone knows, he was camel-driver to a rich widow whom he loved and ultimately married. It was her capital which supported him throughout the early unremunerative years of the prophet business.9 Mohammed was not the man to give an exclusive devotion to any one woman, but there is no doubt that, within the limit set by polygamy, he was genuinely fond of his wife and benefactress.10

　　I have taken examples where the man was poor and the woman rich, but in a world dominated by men the opposite is the commoner case. The psychology, however, is much the same. If a very rich man asks a very poor girl to marry him, she is likely, especially if she has social ambitions, to feel a kind of gratitude which will lead her to fall in love with him, provided he is not too repulsive; at any rate, he will need a smaller degree of personal attractiveness than a poor man would need. Wealth can often purchase not only the semblance of love but its reality.11 This is unjust and undesirable but nonetheless a fact.

1. 在浪漫主义运动风行之初。Romantic Movement: 浪漫主义运动（指18世纪末19世纪初在欧洲文学艺术界兴起的一个反对权威、传统和古典模式的运动）；in its first fervor: 刚开始盛行。
2. 在当时的小说里，这一难题常常由最后一页的重大发现得以巧妙地解决：原先一文不名的女主人公摇身一变，成了巨额财富的继承人。
3. 但是在现实生活中，满心想往这种大团圆结局的年轻人们往往多会大失所望。denouement:（小说、戏剧等的）结局、收场；be apt to: 易于……的。
4. 本杰明·迪斯累里（1804-1881），英国首相[1868，1874-1880]、保守党领袖、作家，写过小说和政论作品，被封为比肯斯菲尔德伯爵。
5. 冷嘲热讽的世人自然认为迪斯累里爱她的财富多过爱她本人，但在一点上世人实在是大错特错了。
cynical: 冷嘲热讽的，挑剔挖苦的。
6. 事实上，一个人之所以会对另一个人产生爱意，很大程度上是由于对方曾帮助自己实现了个人目标。
7. 如果因为这种爱的根源是利己的本能，便认为它算不上真爱，那这种心理分析未免太肤浅。
8. 即Muhammad，穆罕默德（570-632）伊斯兰教创立人，生于麦加城，自称安拉使者，在麦加城开始创立伊斯兰教[610]，后在麦地那建立神权国家[622]，基本上统一了阿拉伯半岛。
9. 正是她的财产帮助穆罕默德度过了早年没有任何收益的传教岁月。unremunerative: 无利可图的，赚不到钱的；prophet:（主义等的）宣扬者，提倡者。
10. 但毫无疑问的是：尽管当时并没有一夫一妻制的约束，他仍然真心实意地爱着他的妻子兼恩人。
polygamy: 或monogamy:一夫一妻制。
11. 金钱不仅可以换来爱的表象，也可能换来爱的实质。 semblance: 外观。