prose怎么理解

There is a well-known incident in one of Motiere’s plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose (散文) during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. (35)Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomena.

在莫里哀的一个剧本中有这样一个著名的插曲：作者让主人公得知他整个一生中一直在说散文后，表现出无限的喜悦。同样，我认为，当你一旦发现你一生中一直在按归纳法和演绎法的哲理办事时，你也会感到安慰和欣喜的。(35)在座的诸位中，大概不会有人一整天都没有机会进行一连串复杂的思考活动，这些思考活动与科学家在探索自然现象原因时所经历的思考活动，尽管复杂程度不同，但在类型上是完全一样的。

把prose翻译成“散文”是不合适的

中文里“散文”不等于“平铺直叙的文体”吧

 a literary medium distinguished from poetry，非诗歌形式的文体，这个范围很广的，“白话文”是比较准确的

prose来自古法语，源自拉丁语prosa，是短语prosa oratio（直白的话语）的简略形式。prosa意为“直白的，直截了当的”，派生自副词pro（向前），本意是“一直向前的”。prose的本意就是“直白的话语，不像诗歌那样讲究措辞、含蓄隽永的文章”

93年考研英语翻译，里面就考到“白话文这个意思，但是考题里还注明prose就是“散文”，这就错了，这里的prose 就应该是“白话文”的意思，表明你以为的prose根本就是平民的生活用语，根本不值得骄傲