古典教育

的re is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, 业余爱好者应该满足于现代书籍. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. 他宁愿读一本十倍长的乏味的现代书, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. 这种错误相当和蔼可亲，因为它源于谦逊. 这个学生有点害怕与一位伟大的哲学家面对面. 他觉得自己能力不足，认为自己不会理解他. 要是他知道就好了, 伟人, 只是因为他的伟大, 比他的现代评论家更容易理解吗. 最简单的学生也能理解, 如果不是全部, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, 但它通常更容易获得，也更令人愉快.

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. 路加还是圣. 保罗或圣. 奥古斯丁或托马斯·阿奎那或[理查德]胡克或[约瑟夫]巴特勒，但是M. (尼古拉)别尔佳耶夫或M. [雅克]玛丽坦或M. (Reinhold) Niebuhr或者(Dorothy) Sayers小姐，甚至是我自己.

这在我看来是颠倒的. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. 一本新书还在试用中，业余人士无权对它作出评判. 它必须与历代伟大的基督教思想体系相对照, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, 当然, 因为谈话的早期阶段给了他们一个特殊的点. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. 唯一的安全是有标准的朴素, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as [Richard] Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. 这样的标准只能从旧书中获得. 这是一个很好的规则, 读完一本新书后, 在你读完一本旧书之前，绝不允许自己再读一本新的. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

每个时代都有自己的前景. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. 也就是那些旧书. 所有当代作家在某种程度上都具有当代的观点——即使是那些作家, 像我这样, 谁最反对它. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. 他们认为他们是完全对立的双方, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “但是他们怎么会这样想呢?——在我们从未怀疑过的地方, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. 威尔斯和卡尔·巴斯. 没有人能完全摆脱这种盲目, 但是我们一定要增加它, 并削弱我们对它的警惕, 如果我们只读现代书籍. 在他们是真的地方，他们会告诉我们我们已经知道一半的真理. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. 的 only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, 而这只能通过阅读旧书来实现. 当然，这并不是说过去有什么魔力. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. 但不是同样的错误. 的y will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, 现在是开放和可触摸的, 不会危及我们. 三个臭皮匠，顶个诸葛亮, 这并不是因为两者都是绝对正确的, 而是因为它们不太可能朝着同一个方向出错. 当然, 未来的书籍将和过去的书籍一样，是一个很好的纠正, 但不幸的是，我们无法得到它们