Now, a certain amount of self-absorption is in our nature.As Harvard’s own E.O. Wilson has recently written, and I quote him, “We are an insatiably curious species – provided the subjects are our personal selves and people we would know or would like to know.” But I want to underscore two troubling aspects of this obsession with ourselves.

　　当然，适度的利己是我们的本性。正如我们哈佛大学的生物学家E.O. Wilson(爱德华·O·威尔逊)教授最近写道的：“我们是一个充满无尽好奇心的物种——只要对象是我们自己以及我们自己知道或想知道的人们。”但是我想强调的是，这种自我迷恋会有两个令人不安的后果。

　　The first is it undermines our sense of responsibility to others –the ethos of service at the heart of Thomas Shepard’s phrase describing Harvard’s enduring commitment to graduate students who are “enlarged” to be about more than themselves. Not just enlarged for their own sake and betterment– but enlarged toward others and toward the world. This is part of the essence of what this university has always strived to be.

　　首先，它削弱了我们对于他人的责任感——一种服务他人的意识。这种意识正是Thomas Shepard(托马斯·希帕德)所描述的哈佛大学的使命：让毕业生们不断成长，超越自我。这种成长并非仅仅是为了每个人自身的利益，更是为了他人和整个世界——这也是这所大学一直以来努力为之奋斗的使命。

　　There is yet another danger we should note as well. Self-absorption may obscure not only our responsibilities to others but our dependence upon them. And this is troubling for Harvard, for higher education and for fundamental social institutions whose purposes and necessity we forget at our peril.

　　利己主义除了削弱了我们的服务意识，还有一种后果也是我们应当注意的。过度的自我关注掩盖的不仅是我们对于他人的责任，还有我们对于他人的依赖。对于哈佛大学、对于高等教育、对于各种社会基础机构，这很是令人困扰。我们遗忘了高校和机构存在的目的和必要性，使我们自己处在危险的境地。

　　Why do we even need college, critics demand? Can’t we do it all on our own? Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has urged students to drop out and has even subsidized them – including several of our undergraduates– to leave college and pursue their individual entrepreneurial dreams. Afterall, the logic goes, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out and they seem to have done OK. Well, yes.

　　为什么我们还需要大学?批评家们问道：我们就不能全靠自学吗?硅谷创业家Peter Thiel(彼得·蒂尔)敦促学生们辍学，甚至还给予他们经济补助，让他们辍学创业——这其中也包括我们哈佛的一些本科生。毕竟，从逻辑上来讲，马克·扎克伯格和比尔·盖茨都辍学了，他们似乎都很成功。事实如此，没错。

　　But we should remember: Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg had Harvard to drop out of. Harvard to serve as the place where their world-changing discoveries were born. Harvard and institutions like it to train the physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, business analysts, lawyers, and thousands of other skilled individuals upon whom Facebook and Microsoft depend.

　　但是请大家别忘了：比尔·盖茨和马克·扎克伯格都是从哈佛辍学的!哈佛是孕育他们改变世界想法的地方。哈佛以及其他像哈佛一样的学府培养了数以千计的物理学家、数学家、计算机科学家、商业分析师、律师和其他有一技之长的人，这些都是Facebook和微软公司赖以生存的员工。

　　Harvard to enlighten public servants to lead a country in which Facebook, Microsoft, and companies like them can thrive. Harvard to nurture the writers and filmmakers and journalists who create the storied “content” that gives the Internet its substance.

　　哈佛也培养了无数的政府官员和人民公仆，建设和领导国家，让像Facebook、微软以及类似的公司可以繁荣发展。哈佛大学还培养了无数的作家、电影制作人和新闻工作者，是他们的作品给互联网增添了“内容”。

　　And wemust recognize as well that universities have served as sources of discoveries essential to the work of the companies advancing the revolutions in technology that have changed our lives – from early successesin creating and programming computers to development of prototypes that laid theground work for the now-ubiquitous touchscreen.

　　而且我们也要看到，大学是人类和社会技术革新的源泉，这些革新是互联网公司发展的基石——从早期创造计算机和编写计算机程序的成功，到如今无处不在的触屏奠定基础的的发展。

　　Institutions embody our present and enduring connections to one other. They bring our disparate talents and capacities to the pursuit of commonpurpose. At the same time, they link us to both what has come before and what will follow. They are repositories of values – values that precede, transcend, and outlast the self. They challenge us to look beyond the immediate, the instantly gratifying, to think about the bigger picture, the longer run, the larger whole. They remind us that the world is only temporarily ours, that we are stewards entrusted with the past and responsible to the future. We are larger than ourselves and our selfies.

　　机构体现了我们与其他个体之间持久的联系，它们将我们不同的天赋和能力拧成一股绳，去追求共同的目标。同时，它们也将我们与过去和未来维系起来。它们是价值的金矿——这些恒久的价值超越了每一个自我。机构促使我们放弃眼前即刻的快感，思考更远大的图景，更长远的全局。它们提醒我们世界只是暂时属于我们，我们肩负着过去和未来的责任，真正的我们要比我们自己和我们的自拍照要广博得多。

　　That responsibility is quintessentially the work of universities – calling upon our shared human heritage to invent a new future – the future that will be created by the thousands of graduates who leave here today. Our work is about that on going commitment – not to a single individual or even one generation or one era – but to a larger world and to the service of the age that is waiting before it.

　　而大学的责任正在于此——用我们共同的人类遗产号召大家去开拓未来——这个未来将由今天从这里毕业的数千名哈佛学生去创造。我们的工作是一个持续的承诺，它并不针对单一的个体，甚至不针对一代人或一个时代，它是对一个更大的世界的承诺，是一个对于正在等待它服务的时代的承诺。

　　In 1884, my predecessor Charles William Eliot unveiled a statue of John Harvard and spoke of the good that can come from the study of what we might call the “enlarged” life of the man whose name this university bears.

　　1884年，我的前辈、Charles William Eliot(查尔斯·威廉·艾略特)校长为约翰·哈佛雕像揭幕，并谈到研究约翰·哈佛——这位冠名了这所大学的人——“波澜壮阔”的一生带来的启发。

　　Eliot said: “He will teach that the good which men do lives after them, fructified and multiplied beyond all power of measurement o rcomputation. He will teach that from the seed which he planted … have sprung joy, strength, and energy ever fresh, blooming year after year in this garden of learning, and flourishing … as time goes on, in all fields of human activity.”

　　Eliot校长说：“他(约翰·哈佛)会告诉人们善行会流芳百世，会以超越所有计量方式的速度和规模繁衍。他会教导人们，在这个教育花园里播下的种子，如何迸发出喜悦、力量以及永远新鲜的能量，年年花开，随着时光流转，在人类活动的所有领域，花繁叶茂。”

　　In other words, that statue we paraded past this afternoon is not simply a monument to an individual, but to a community and an institution constantly renewing itself. Your presence here today represents an act of connection and of affirmation of that communityand of this institution. It is a recognition of Harvard’s capacity to propel you toward lives and worlds beyond your own. I thank you for the commitment that brought you here today and for all it means and sustains. I wish you joy, strength, and energy ever fresh.

　　所以，今天下午我们列队行进经过的那座雕像，它不仅仅是一座代表个人的纪念碑，更是代表一个不断自我更新的社区和机构的纪念碑。你们今天坐在这里，就代表了一种对于哈佛这个社区和机构的认可，这种认可也是你对于哈佛驱使你超越自我、惠及他人的感召力的认可。我感谢你们今天在这里的许下的承诺，祝你们每一位都开心、健康且永远充满活力!

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（编辑：何莹莹）