雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(39)
Like many people (ter among them) he found a special pleasure in discovering Samuel Butler's Erewhon.
像很多人一樣（比如E.M.福斯特），艾倫讀塞繆爾.勃特勒的《埃萬共和國》，得到了很多樂趣。
Here was a Victorian writer who had doubted the moral axioms, playing with them in Looking-Glass fashion by attaching the taboos on sex to the eating of meat, describing Anglican religion in terms of transactions in ornamental money, and exchanging the associations of 'sin' with those of 'sickness'.
這是一位維多利亞時代作家，他用愛麗絲鏡中奇遇的手法戲弄道德公理。
Alan also much admired Butler's successor Bernard Shaw, enjoying his light play with serious ideas.
艾倫也非常欣賞勃特勒的繼承人蕭伯納，欣賞他富有深刻內涵的娛樂劇。
For the well-read sophisticate of the 1930s, Butler and Shaw were already out-worn classics, but for one from Sherborne School they still held a liberating magic.
對於30年代見過世面的人們來說，勃特勒和蕭伯納已經是老朽的經典，但對於一個剛從舍爾伯尼走出來的人來說，他們擁有一種解放的魔力。
Shaw had taken up what Ibsen* called 'the revolution of the Spirit', and wanted to show true individuals on the stage, those who lived not by 'customary morals' but by inner conviction.
蕭伯納認同易卜生（艾倫也同樣認爲易卜生的戲劇非常出色）所說的精神革命，要在舞臺上表現真實的人，那種不靠正統道德，而是依靠內心信念的人。
But Shaw also asked hard questions about what kind of society could contain such true individuals: questions highly pertinent to a young Alan Turing.
但是蕭伯納也提出了一個難題：什麼樣的社會能夠包容這樣真實的人？
Back to Methuselah, which Alan thought 'a very good play' in May 1933, was an attempt at what Shaw called 'politics sub specie aeternitatis'.
這個問題，問到了年輕的艾倫.圖靈心裏去。1933年5月，艾倫覺得《千歲人》非常好，
With its science-fiction view of Fabian ideas, treating with contempt the sordid realities of Asquith and Lloyd George,
這部戲帶着費邊主義的科幻色彩，諷刺首相阿斯奎和和洛伊德.喬治。
it suited Alan's idealist frame of mind.
這與艾倫的理想主義思想，產生了深深的共鳴。
