The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Page 98

但时间终于开始淡化我最初的惊恐；良心的谴责开始变成习以为常的事；我开始被阵阵渴望所折磨，就像海德在挣扎着追求自由；最后，在道德软弱的时刻，我再次调制并吞下了那变身的药水。

But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.

我想，当一个醉汉反思自己的恶习时，他在五百次中不会有一次真正被那些因其粗野的、生理上的麻木不仁而带来的危险所触动；同样，尽管我长期思考自己的处境，我也没有充分考虑到爱德华·海德的显著特征——完全的道德麻木和对作恶毫无顾忌的冲动。

I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde.

然而正是这些特质惩罚了我。我内心的恶魔被囚禁已久，他咆哮着冲了出来。

Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.

即使在我服药的时候，我就意识到一种更加不受约束的、更加狂暴的作恶倾向。

I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill.

我想，一定是这种倾向在我灵魂中激起了那种不耐烦的狂躁，以至于我在听那个不幸受害者的客套话时无法忍受；我至少在上帝面前声明，任何神智正常的人都不会因为如此微不足道的刺激而犯下那样的罪行；我下手时的心态，就像一个生病的孩子摔碎玩具一样毫无理性。

It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God, no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything.