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It is a human world, but one that is human in ways no one expected. The image it reveals is not the worn and battered face that stares from Leonardo's self-portrait much less the one that stares, bleary and uninspired, every morning from the bathroom mirror. These are the faces of history. It is, rather, the image of an eternally playful and eternally youthful power that makes order whether order is there or not and that having made one order is quite capable of putting it aside and creating an entirely different or the way a child might build one structure from a set of blocks and then without malice and purely in the spirit of play demolish it and begin again. It is an image of the power that made humanity possible in the first place.
現代文化是一個顯示人的特點的世界，但又不是人們想象的那種模樣。它所表現的形象不是列奧納多自畫像上那種倦怠憔悴的面容，更不是每天早晨從浴室鏡子里見到的模模糊糊、平平淡淡的面孔。這些都是歷史的本來面目了。現代文化是一種永遠具有玩耍性而又朝氣蓬勃的力量;這種力量可以創造出某種秩序，不管這種秩序是否客觀存在于現實世界之中;而且，在創造出一種秩序后，又完全有可能打破這種秩序，再創一個完全不同的新秩 序，就像一個小孩玩積木時已經拼造出一種結構后又毫無惡意地以純粹的玩耍態度拆散重拼一樣。這就是它使人類顯示其特點的形象。
The banks of the nineteenth century tended to be neoclassic structures of marble or granite faced with ponderous rows of columns. They made a statement" "We are solid. We are permanent. We are as reliable as history. Your money is safe in our vaults."
十九世紀的銀行一般都是以大理石或花崗石砌成的新古典式建筑，正面裝飾著一排排粗重的廊柱。它們向世人宣告："我們堅不可摧;我們永不衰朽;我們像歷史一樣令人信賴。您的錢儲放在我們的地下保險庫里可保絕對完全。"
Today's banks are airy structures of steel and glass, or they are store-fronts with slot-machinelike terminals, or trailers parked on the lots of suburban shopping malls.
今天的銀行卻是一些鋼架玻璃結構的虛無飄渺的建筑，或是一些門前裝有像自動售貨機一樣的計算機終端設備的商店門面，或是一些停放在城郊商業中心停車場上的掛車式活動房屋。
The vaults have been replaced by magnetic tapes. In a computer, money is sequences of digital signals endlessly recorded, erased, processed, and reprocessed, and endlessly modified by other computers. The statement of modern banks is "We are abstract like art and almost invisible like the Crystal Palace. If we exist at all, we exist as an airy medium in which your transactions are completed and your wealth increased."
原先的地下保險庫如今也換成了磁帶來替代其職能。錢在電腦中變成了一系列數字信號，這些數字信號要不斷地經過其他電腦一次次地錄入、刪除、處理、再處理并不斷加以修改。現代銀行向世人宣告的是："我們像藝術般的抽象，幾乎像水晶宮般的無形。假如我們還存在的話，我們也只是以一種虛無飄渺的媒介而存在，通過這種媒介您們的交易得以進行，您們的財富得以增值。"
That, perhaps, establishes the logical limit of the modern aesthetic. If so, the limit is a long way ahead, but it can be made out, just barely, through the haze over the road. As surely as nature is being swallowed up by the mind, the banks, you might say, are disappearing through their own skylights.
也許這就可以成為現代美學發展的邏輯上的極限。如果這樣的話，這個極限點距離我們還有一段較長的路程，但其模糊的輪廓透過路上彌漫著的薄霧已依稀可辨。正如物質世界的客觀現實逐漸消失于人們的頭腦中一樣，可以說，現代銀行也正從自己的天窗中逐漸消失。
