1.11 有个农夫对我说

有个农夫对我说：“你只吃蔬菜是不行的，蔬菜里没有生骨的物质”；于是他就这样每日虔诚地给身体供给着骨骼的原料；而他身前那群犍牛，在说话间正迈动蔬菜养就的骨头，拽着他和那沉重的犁一路向前，不惧坎坷。某些群体实在难以自拔、病态依赖的生活必需品，不过只是他人眼中的奢侈之物，而另一些地方的人们甚至对其闻所未闻。¹

One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.

Footnotes

1. 牛和人是不一样的，限于生物知识水平，梭罗恐怕不太了解牛这类食草动物为什么可以只吃素而不用吃肉就能补充蛋白质。事实上，为了产生足够的蛋白质，牛需要不断地进食大量草料，并储存到瘤胃当中，通过反刍最大限度地吸收利用草中的营养物质，把草的主要成分纤维素分解成葡萄糖，再通过糖化作用转化为脂肪，其中间产物转化为氨基酸并生成蛋白质吸收。光这样还不够，牛还需要借助胃肠道中的微生物，补充消解草中的养分。不过，梭罗举这个例子是想探讨什么才是真正的必需品。看来牛和人的必需品不同，也算是契合他最后观点了。 ↩