Английский для смелых. Истории о духах и привидениях / Great Ghost Stories - стр. 26

/решение/; trifle – мелочь, пустяк; to trifle – вести себя легкомысленно; заниматься пустяками; trifler – тот, кто занимается пустяками). He who believes, is a dreamer or a fool (тот, кто верит, мечтатель или дурак).’

 ‘The world,’ he said, ‘grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. They condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief in apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly? Show me any fact in physics, in history, in archaeology, which is supported by testimony so wide and so various. Attested by all races of men, in all ages, and in all climates, by the soberest sages of antiquity, by the rudest savage of today, by the Christian, the Pagan, the Pantheist, the Materialist, this phenomenon is treated as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century. Circumstantial evidence weighs with them as a feather in the balance. The comparison of causes with effects, however valuable in physical science, is put aside as worthless and unreliable. The evidence of competent witnesses, however conclusive in a court of justice, counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces, is condemned as a trifler. He who believes, is a dreamer or a fool.’

He spoke with bitterness (он говорил с горечью), and, having said thus, relapsed for some minutes into silence (и, сказав это, на несколько минут погрузился в молчание; to relapse – впадать /в какое-либо состояние/). Presently he raised his head from his hands (вскоре он выпрямился: «поднял голову со своих рук»), and added, with an altered voice and manner (и добавил, изменившимся голосом и в другой манере),

‘I, sir, paused, investigated, believed (я, сэр, колебался, исследовал, поверил; pause – пауза, перерыв; замешательство, колебания), and was not ashamed to state my convictions to the world (и не постыдился изложить миру свои убеждения; to state – заявлять; формулировать; излагать). I, too, was branded as a visionary (я тоже был заклеймен как мечтатель; visionary – мечтатель; выдумщик, фантазер), held up to ridicule by my contemporaries (выставлен на посмешище моими современниками; to hold up – выставлять, показывать; to ridicule – осмеивать; поднимать на смех), and hooted from that field of science in which I had laboured with honour during all the best years of my life