'Useless' Knowledge '无用的'知识
By Bertrand Russell
Francis Bacon, a man who rose to eminence by betraying his friends, asserted, no doubt as one of the ripe lessons of experience, that ‘knowledge is power’. But this is not true of all knowledge. Sir Thomas Browne wished to know what song the sirens sang, but if he had ascertained this it would not have enabled him to rise from being a magistrate to being High Sheriff of his county. The sort of knowledge that Bacon had in mind was that which we call scientific. In emphasising the importance of science, he was belatedly carrying on the tradition of the Arabs and the early Middle Ages, according to which knowledge consisted mainly as astrology, alchemy, and pharmacology, all of which were branches of science. A learned man was one who, having mastered these studies, had acquired magical powers. In the early eleventh century, Pope Silvester II, for no reason except that he read books, was universally believed to be a magician in league with the devil. Prospero, who in Shakespeare’s time was a mere phantasy, represented what had been for centuries the generally received conception of a learned man, so far at least as his powers of sorcery were concerned. Bacon believed—rightly, as we now know—that science could provide a more powerful magician’s wand than any that had been dreamed of by the necromancers of former ages.
英国一位靠出卖朋友而声名大噪的人——弗兰西斯·培根曾说：“知识就是力量。”这无疑是一句成熟的经验总结。托马斯·布朗爵士曾想弄清希腊神话中的海妖究竟唱什么歌，然而即使他确实清楚了，也不能帮他从一个地方长官提升为国家的高级行政长官。培根心目中的知识是指我们所说的科学知识。在强调科学的重要性时，他陈腐地承继阿拉伯和中世纪早期的传统，把知识看作主要由占星学、炼金术和药物学组成，这些都是科学的分支。一位精通这些学科的学者就是获得魔术般力量的人。11 世纪初，教皇西尔维斯特二世除了读些书外，并没有别的理由，就被普遍地看作是一个与魔鬼结盟的魔术师。普罗斯帕罗，在莎士比亚的时代只是一个虚构的人物，但几个世纪以来却代表着人们普遍接受的学者的概念，至今就其法力而言是人们所关注的。培根相信——正确地说，就如现在我们所知道的——科学能够提供比从前巫师任何幻梦还更有力的魔术师的魔杖。
The renaissance, which was at its height in England at the time of Bacon, involved a revolt against the utilitarian conception of knowledge. The Greeks had acquired a familiarity with Homer, as we do with music hall songs, because they enjoyed him, and without feeling that they were engaged in the pursuit of learning. But the men of the sixteenth century could not begin to understand him without first absorbing a very considerable amount of linguistic erudition. They admired the Greeks, and did not wish to be shut out from their pleasures; they therefore copied them, both in reading the classics and in other less avowable ways. Learning, in the renaissance, was part of the joie de vivre, just as much as drinking or love-making. And this was true not only of literature, but also of sterner studies. Everyone knows the story of Hobbes’s first contact with Euclid: opening the book, by chance, at the theorem of Pythagoras, he exclaimed, ‘By God, this is impossible’, and proceeded to read the proofs backwards until, reaching the axioms, he became convinced. No one can doubt that this was for him a voluptuous moment, unsullied by the thought of the utility of geometry in measuring fields.
培根在世时，英国的文艺复兴达到高峰，它包含一种对功利主义的知识概念的反抗。希腊人之熟悉荷马，有如我们熟悉音乐厅的歌曲，由于他们欣赏荷马，而不觉得是在忙于追求学问。但16世纪的人若不首先具备相当的语言学知识，就不能着手研究荷马。他们敬佩希腊人，并且又不愿意置身在他们的欢乐之外；因此在读那些古典著作时，他们总在仿效希腊人。在文艺复兴时，学习是生活乐趣的一部分，如同饮酒或性爱一佯。不仅对文学是这样，对那些较严肃的学科来说也是如此。人们都知道霍布斯首次接触欧几里德几何学的故事：一次他偶然翻开书，读到毕达哥拉斯定理，他大声叫道：“上帝，这是不可能的。”于是回头继续读它的证明，直至读到公理时，他才信服了。没有人会怀疑，对霍布斯来说，这一时刻如同耽迷酒色，然而想到几何学在测量土地中的效用，这种情绪被纯化了。
It is true that the renaissance found a practical use for the ancient languages in connection with theology. One of the earliest results of the new feeling for classical Latin was the discrediting of the forged decretals and the donation of Constantine. The inaccuracies which were discovered in the Vulgate and the Septuagint made Greek and Hebrew a necessary part of the controversial equipment of Protestant divines. The republican maxims of Greece and Rome were invoked to justify the resistance of Puritans to the Stuarts and of Jesuits to monarchs who had thrown off allegiance to the Pope. But all this was an effect, rather than a cause, of the revival of classical learning, which had been in full swing in Italy for nearly a century before Luther. The main motive of the renaissance was mental delight, the restoration of a certain richness and freedom in art and speculation which had been lost while ignorance and superstition kept the mind’s eye in blinkers.
确实，文艺复兴发现了古典语言与神学相关的实际用途。新感受到的古典拉丁文的最初成果之一，就是不再相信编造的教皇教条和康士坦丁的捐赠。在拉丁文圣经和希腊译文圣经之间出现的偏差，使得希腊文和希伯来文成为新教神学家准备争论的一个必要组成部分。希腊与罗马的共和主义被用来证明清教徒与斯图亚特王朝、耶稣会会员与那些不再忠顺于教皇的君主之间的对抗是合理的。但所有这一切都是路德以前在意大利将近一个世纪自由发展的古典学术之复兴的结果，而不是其原由。文艺复兴的主要动机是精神上的欢愉，是复兴在艺术和思维中曾经出现过、但后来由于无知和迷信蒙住了我们的心灵而失落的那种丰富而自由的精神。
The Greeks, it was found, had devoted a part of their attention to matters not purely literary or artistic, such as philosophy, geometry, and astronomy. These studies, therefore, were respectable, but other sciences were more open to question. Medicine, it was true, was dignified by the names of Hippocrates and Galen; but in the intervening period it had become almost confined to Arabs and Jews, and inextricably intertwined with magic. Hence the dubious reputation of such men as Paracelsus. Chemistry was in even worse odour, and hardly became respectable until the eighteenth century.
人们发现，希腊人专注的问题不纯粹是文学和艺术，像哲学、几何学和天文学这些学科也受到关注。因此，这些学科是很受人尊重的，但其他学科更容易的产生问题。医学确实由于希波克拉底和盖伦的名声而高贵起来；但在中间阶段它似乎仅限存在阿拉伯人和犹太人之间，且同巫术纠缠在一起。因而出现诸如巴拉塞尔士如此暧昧声名的人。化学的境况更糟，而且在18世纪之前很少受到重视。
In this way it was brought about that knowledge of Greek and Latin, with a smattering of geometry and perhaps astronomy, came to be considered the intellectual equipment of a gentleman. The Greeks disdained the practical applications of geometry, and it was only in their decadence that they found a use for astronomy in the guise of astrology. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the main, studied mathematics with Hellenic disinterestedness, and tended to ignore the sciences which had been degraded by their connection with sorcery. A gradual change towards a wider and more practical conception of knowledge, which was going on throughout the eighteenth century, was suddenly accelerated at the end of that period by the French Revolution and the growth of machinery, of which the former gave a blow to gentlemanly culture while the latter offered new and astonishing scope for the exercise of ungentlemanly skill. Throughout the last hundred and fifty years, men have questioned more and more vigorously the value of ‘useless’ knowledge, and have come increasingly to believe that the only knowledge worth having is that which is applicable to some part of the economic life of the community.
这样就带来有关希腊文和拉丁文的知识，连同对几何学或许还有天文学的一知半解被看作是一个高尚绅士有文化教养的条件。希腊人轻视几何学的实际应用，只在他们衰败时，他们才发现以占星学伪饰的天文学的用途。16和17世纪主要是以希腊人的公正态度去研究数学，那些由于同巫术联结在一起而贬低了自身价值的科学相对说受到忽略。贯穿整个18世纪的是更广博和更实用的知识观念的逐渐变迁。就在这个世纪末，这一观念由于受到法国大革命的机器增长的影响而加速形成。法国大革命给绅士式的文化以沉重打击，而机器增长为非绅士式的技艺的应用提供了新的和令人惊讶的广阔空间。过去的150年中，人们对“无用的”知识的价值产生愈来愈强烈地质疑，而且他们逐步相信，唯一有价值的知识是可应用于部分社会经济生活的知识。
In countries such as France and England, which have a traditional educational system, the utilitarian view of knowledge has only partially prevailed. There are still, for example, professors of Chinese in the universities who read the Chinese classics but are unacquainted with the works of Sun Yat-sen, which created modern China. There are still men who know ancient history in so far as it was related by authors whose style was pure, that is to say up to Alexander in Greece and Nero in Rome, but refuse to know the much more important later history because of the literary inferiority of the historians who related it. Even in France and England, however, the old tradition is dying, and in more up to date countries, such as Russia and the United States, it is utterly extinct. In America, for example, educational commissions point out that fifteen hundred words are all that most people employ in business correspondence, and therefore suggest that all others should be avoided in the school curriculum. Basic English, a British invention, goes still further, and reduces the necessary vocabulary to eight hundred words. The conception of speech as something capable of aesthetic value is dying out, and it is coming to be thought that the sole purpose of words is to convey practical information. In Russia the pursuit of practical aims is even more whole-hearted than in America: all that is taught in educational institutions is intended to serve some obvious purpose in education or government. The only escape is afforded by theology: the sacred scriptures must be studied by some in the original German, and a few professors must learn philosophy in order to defend dialectical materialism against the criticism of bourgeois metaphysicians. But as orthodoxy becomes more firmly established, even this tiny loophole will be closed.
在法国和英国这样具有传统教育制度的国度，关干知识的功利主义的观点，只是在某些方面盛行。例如它们的大学虽然有中文教授，会读中文古典作品，而对开创现代中国的孙逸仙的著作并不熟悉。也有些人知道古代史，因为记叙古代史的作者的文体是高雅的，这就是指止于亚历山大在希腊和尼禄在罗马的历史，但他们拒绝去了解后来更为重要的历史，因为记叙后来历史的作者文笔太拙劣了。即使在法国和英国，这种古老的传统也濒临消逝，而在俄国和美国这种新兴的国家，这一现象是完全过时了。例如在美国，教育委员会指出有1500个单词是大多数人用于商业交往的，因此他们提议在学校课程中所有其他单词要避免使用。美国人发明的基础英语走得更远，把必备的字数减化为800个单词。把语言看作具有某种美学价值的概念正在消失，而且人们逐渐会把单词的唯一目的视为传递实用信息。在俄国，追求实用的目的比美国更为明确：教育部门所传授的都是服务于教育或政府的某种明确的目的。逃避这种目标的唯一方式是由神学提供的：宗教圣经必须由某些人从德文原本进行研读，又有少数教授必须研究哲学，以便为辩证唯物主义辩护，抑制资产阶级形而上学家的批评。但由于已比较稳固地建立了正统模式，即使这点微窄的逃路也将被封闭。
Knowledge, everywhere, is coming to be regarded not as a good in itself, or as a means of creating a broad and humane outlook on life in general, but as merely an ingredient in technical skill. This is part of the greater integration of society which has been brought about by scientific technique and military necessity. There is more economic and political interdependence than there was in former times, and therefore there is more social pressure to compel a man to live in a way that his neighbours think useful. Educational establishments, except those for the very rich, or (in England) such as have become invulnerable through antiquity, are not allowed to spend their money as they like, but must satisfy the State that they are serving a useful purpose by imparting skill and instilling loyalty. This is part and parcel of the same movement which has led to compulsory military service, boy scouts, the organisation of political parties, and the dissemination of political passion by the Press. We are all more aware of our fellow-citizens than we used to be, more anxious, if we are virtuous, to do them good, and in any case to make them do us good. We do not like to think of anyone lazily enjoying life, however refined may be the quality of his enjoyment. We feel that everybody ought to be doing something to help on the great cause (whatever it may be), the more so as so many bad men are working against it and ought to be stopped. We have not leisure of mind, therefore, to acquire any knowledge except such as will help us in the fight for whatever it may happen to be that we think important.
无论何处，知识渐渐被看作是自身无益的东西，也不是开拓整体人生的博大仁慈襟怀之工具，而被看作只是工艺技巧的一要素而已。这是科学技术和军事需要而带来的较大的社会一体化的一部分。当今比以往存在着更为紧密的政治和经济的相互依赖性，因此迫使个人生活要迎合其同胞所认可有用的方式需承受的社会压力也比以往更大。教育制度，除了那些专为富人设置的，或者像在美国自古以来保存下来的惯例外，不允许自作主张去支配经费，而必须服务于传授技艺和灌输忠诚等有用目的，以使国家满意。这正是导向建立义务兵役制、童子军、政治党派组织和靠新闻媒体散布政治情绪此类活动的重要组成部分。我们现在比过去更了解我们的同胞，如果是有美德的人，我们更想为他们行善，而且无论如何也使他们为我们行善。我们不想有谁过着懒惰逸乐的生活，无论他过的这种生活多么高贵文雅。我们认为每个人都应该做些有益于伟大事业的事情（无论这种事业可能是怎样的）；有许多坏人愈来愈反对这种事业，我们应该加以制止。因此我们没有闲心去获取任何知识，除非我们认为是重要的，于我们有益而值得为之奋斗的知识。对于狭隘的功利主义教育观，有许多话可说。在开始谋生之前，人们没有时间去事事都学，无疑“有用的”知识是最有用的。它建立了当代世界。没有它，我们就没有机器、摩托车、铁路、飞机；进一步说，我们就不会有现代的广告和宣传事业。现代知识已带来人们普遍健康状况的大大改善，与此同时也发现了如何使用毒气去毁灭大城市的方法。周以往比起来，我们今日世界最明显的特点在于“有用的”知识。迄今没有一个社会充分拥有这类知识，但不可置疑，教育必会不断增进它。
There is much to be said for the narrowly utilitarian view of education. There is not time to learn everything before beginning to make a living, and undoubtedly ‘useful’ knowledge is very useful. It has made the modern world. Without it, we should not have machines or motor-cars or railways or aeroplanes; it should be added that we should not have modern advertising or modern propaganda. Modern knowledge has brought about an immense improvement in average health, and at the same time has discovered how to exterminate large cities by poison gas. Whatever is distinctive of our world, as compared with former times, has its source in ‘useful’ knowledge. No community as yet has enough of it, and undoubtedly education must continue to promote it.
对于狭隘的功利主义教育观，有许多话可说。在开始谋生之前，人们没有时间去事事都学，无疑“有用的”知识是最有用的。它建立了当代世界。没有它，我们就没有机器、摩托车、铁路、飞机；进一步说，我们就不会有现代的广告和宣传事业。现代知识已带来人们普遍健康状况的大大改善，与此同时也发现了如何使用毒气去毁灭大城市的方法。周以往比起来，我们今日世界最明显的特点在于“有用的”知识。迄今没有一个社会充分拥有这类知识，但不可置疑，教育必会不断增进它。
It must also be admitted that a great deal of the traditional cultural education was foolish. Boys spent many years acquiring Latin and Greek grammar, without being, at the end, either capable or desirous (except in a small percentage of cases) of reading a Greek or Latin author. Modern languages and history are preferable, from every point of view, to Latin and Greek. They are not only more useful, but they give much more culture in much less time. For an Italian of the fifteenth century, since practically everything worth reading, if not in his own language, was in Greek or Latin, these languages were the indispensable keys to culture. But since that time great literatures have grown up in various modern languages, and the development of civilisation has been so rapid that knowledge of antiquity has become much less useful in understanding our problems than knowledge of modern nations and their comparatively recent history. The traditional schoolmaster’s point of view, which was admirable at the time of the revival of learning, became gradually unduly narrow, since it ignored what the world has done since the fifteenth century. And not only history and modern languages, but science also, when properly taught, contributes to culture. It is therefore possible to maintain that education should have other aims than direct utility, without defending the traditional curriculum. Utility and culture, when both are conceived broadly, are found to be less incompatible than they appear to the fanatical advocates of either.
同样必须承认许多传统文化教育是愚蠢的。儿童花很多年的功夫去学习拉丁文和希腊文法，而终究既不能也不想（除了一小部分之外）去读希腊文或拉丁文著作。从各方面考察，现代语言和历史比拉丁文和希腊文更可取。它们不仅更有用，而且能在更少的时间内给予更多的文化知识。对于一个15世纪的意大利人来说，由于事实上每一点都值得阅读，如不用他自己的语言，就要用希腊文或拉丁文，这些语文都是文化入门必不可少的关键。但此后，各种现代语文的伟大文学作品出现了，文明的进展如此迅速，使得古代知识在解释当今问题上，比起现代国家和关于这些国家的最近历史的知识更少用。知识复兴时值得赞扬的古典教师的观点，逐渐变得过分狭窄，因为这种观点忽视了15世纪来世界的变更。因而可以说，不仅是历史和现代语言，连科学在正确的指导下也对丈化有所贡献。从而，教育除了直接的实用目的外，还应有其他目的，不必为传统课程辩护。当我们对实用和文化这两方面作充分的考虑时，会发现这两者并不像它们的狂热拥护者所认为的那样不相容。
Apart, however, from the cases in which culture and direct utility can be combined, there is indirect utility, of various different kinds, in the possession of knowledge which does not contribute to technical efficiency. I think some of the worst features of the modern world could be improved by a greater encouragement of such knowledge and a less ruthless pursuit of mere professional competence.
然而，除了文化和直接效用能被联结起来的情况外，还有对技术效用并无种益的各种不同的间接效用。我认为现代世界的某些最坏状况，能够通过这种知识的巨大鼓舞和减少无情地追求纯粹职业能力而得以改善。
When conscious activity is wholly concentrated on some one definite purpose, the ultimate result, for most people, is lack of balance accompanied by some form of nervous disorder. The men who directed German policy during the war made mistakes, for example, as regards the submarine campaign which brought America on to the side of the Allies, which any person coming fresh to the subject could have seen to be unwise, but which they could not judge sanely owing to mental concentration and lack of holidays. The same sort of thing may be seen wherever bodies of men attempt tasks which put a prolonged strain upon spontaneous impulses. Japanese imperialists, Russian Communists, and German Nazis all have a kind of tense fanaticism which comes of living too exclusively in the mental world of certain tasks to be accomplished. When the tasks are as important and as feasible as the fanatics suppose, the result may be magnificent; but in most cases narrowness of outlook has caused oblivion of some powerful counteracting force, or has made all such forces seem the work of the devil, to be met by punishment and terror. Men as well as children have need of play, that is to say, of periods of activity having no purpose beyond present enjoyment. But if play is to serve its purpose, it must be possible to find pleasure and interest in matters not connected with work.
当自觉的行动完全集中于某一确定的目的时，对于大多数人来说，最终的结果是伴随某种精神上的混乱而失却平衡。战争期间，控制德国政策的人犯错误，例如，由于发动潜水艇战使美国站到同盟国一边，任何人稍微了解就可看出其中之不明智，但他们由于精神上专注于一点，又缺乏冷静的考虑，以致未能作出正确的判断。同样的事也会在那些把长期紧张状态加诸于自发冲动而费力工作的人群中发生。日本帝国主义者、俄国共产主义者和德国纳粹分子都曾出现过或现在仍存有这种紧张狂热，这就是由于在他们的精神世界中为完成某种任务而过度紧张，当狂热分子设想着任务重要得可实施时，其结果可能辉煌一时；但在多数的情况下，狭隘的眼界会使某种有力的抵制力量混灭，或者使得所有这样的力量遭到惩罚与非难，如同是魔鬼的行为。成年人像儿童一样需要娱乐，这就是说，在现时的享乐之外还需要毫无目的的活动时间。但如果娱乐要合乎自的，就必须在工作之余去寻求快乐和兴趣。
The amusements of modern urban populations tend more and more to be passive and collective, and to consist of inactive observation of the skilled activities of others. Undoubtedly such amusements are much better than none, but they are not as good as would be those of a population which had, through education, a wider range of intelligent interests not connected with work. Better economic organisation, allowing mankind to benefit by the productivity of machines, should lead to a very great increase of leisure, and much leisure is apt to be tedious except to those who have considerable intelligent activities and interests. If a leisured population is to be happy, it must be an educated population, and must be educated with a view to mental enjoyment as well as to the direct usefulness of technical knowledge.
现代城市居民的娱乐方式愈来愈趋向消极的和集体的，而且也趋于懒散地观看他人的技艺活动。无可怀疑，此种娱乐方式比没有要好，但是总不如那些受过教育而具有的与工作无关的广泛的智力兴趣。由于机器生产改善了人们的经济状况，人们的闲暇增多了。除了那些有充分的智力活动和兴趣的人外，闲暇往往使人厌倦。由此，闲人要想过得愉快，必须受教育，必须提高自己的心灵涵养和接受具有直接实用性的技术知识的教育。
The cultural element in the acquisition of knowledge, when it is successfully assimilated, forms the character of a man’s thoughts and desires, making them concern themselves, in part at least, with large impersonal objects, not only with matters of immediate importance to himself. It has been too readily assumed that, when a man has acquired certain capacities by means of knowledge, he will use them in ways that are socially beneficial. The narrowly utilitarian conception of education ignores the necessity of training a man’s purposes as well as his skill. There is in untrained human nature a very considerable element of cruelty, which shows itself in many ways, great and small. Boys at school tend to be unkind to a new boy, or to one whose clothes are not quite conventional. Many women (and not a few men) inflict as much pain as they can by means of malicious gossip. The Spaniards enjoy bull-fights; the British enjoy hunting and shooting. The same cruel impulses take more serious forms in the hunting of Jews in Germany and kulaks in Russia. All imperialism affords scope for them, and in war they become sanctified as the highest form of public duty.
也许“无用的”知识最重要的优点是能促动心灵沉思的习惯。现在世界上有许多人遇事过分轻率，不仅行动之前没有经过周密考虑，而且对有的行动从智谋上加以考虑也难以进行。在这个问题已，人们以各种奇异的方式表现出他们的偏见。靡菲斯特对年轻的学生说，理论是灰色的，生命之树是常青的。人们引证这句话时，都以为它似乎是歌德的格言，当作他认为魔鬼会对一个大学生说此话似的。哈姆雷特被看作“思而不行”的严肃告诫者，然而没有人认为奥赛罗是“行而不思”的告诫者。柏格森之类的教授对一般人持着势利眼，极力贬低哲学，说什么生命至少就像一队骑兵冲锋，就我看来，我认为当行动是出于对宇宙和人类命运的深刻了解，而不是出于野蛮的浪漫冲动而失衡的自我肯定时，它是最好的。在思想上而不是在行动上去寻求愉快的习惯，是对抗愚昧无知和过度权力欲的一种保护措施，是在不幸中保持镇定、在忧虑中保持平静的一种方法。禁闭于自我的生命可能迟早会变得痛苦不堪；只有透过宽广而较少的烦闷的亮窗，生命之中较为悲惨的部分才能变得坚韧。
Now it must be admitted that highly educated people are sometimes cruel, I think there can be no doubt that they are less often so than people whose minds have lain fallow. The bully in a school is seldom a boy whose proficiency in learning is up to the average. When a lynching takes place, the ring-leaders are almost invariably very ignorant men. This is not because mental cultivation produces positive humanitarian feelings, though it may do so; it is rather because it gives other interests than the illtreatment of neighbours, and other sources of self-respect than the assertion of domination. The two things most universally desired are power and admiration. Ignorant men can, as a rule, only achieve either by brutal means, involving the acquisition of physical mastery. Culture gives a man less harmful forms of power and more deserving ways of making himself admired. Galileo did more than any monarch has done to change the world, and his power immeasurably exceeded that of his persecutors. He had therefore no need to aim at becoming a persecutor in his turn.
现在必须承认受过高等教育的人有时也是残忍的，但我认为他们比起那些心灵未经开化的人，较少如此。行凶斗殴的人在学校里学习很少能达到中等水准。当一件私设公堂的事情发生时，其魁首几乎都是些无知的人。这并不因为精神教养能激发积极的人道主义情感，尽管也可能如此；相反地这是由于它所带来的是除了虐待他人之外没有其余兴趣，除了支配他人外没有其他自尊之来源。最为人们普遍向往的两件事情就是权力和颂扬。一般说来，无知的人只能诉诸粗野的方式来获得这两者，包括体力上的征服。文化教养提供给人的是很少有害的权力形式和较多使自己受到称赞的有价值的方式。对于改变这个世界来说，伽利略所做的比任何君王要多，而他的力量远远胜过那些迫害他的人。因而，他也无需反过来成为一个迫害者。
Perhaps the most important advantage of ‘useless’ knowledge is that it promotes a contemplative habit of mind. There is in the world too much readiness, not only for action without adequate previous reflection, but also for some sort of action on occasions on which wisdom would counsel inaction. People show their bias on this matter in various curious ways. Mephistopheles tells the young student that theory is grey but the tree of life is green, and everyone quotes this as if it were Goethe’s opinion, instead of what he supposes the devil would be likely to say to an undergraduate. Hamlet is held up as an awful warning against thought without action, but no one holds up Othello as a warning against action without thought. Professors such as Bergson, from a kind of snobbery towards the practical man, decry philosophy, and say that life at its best should resemble a cavalry charge. For my part, I think action is best when it emerges from a profound apprehension of the universe and human destiny, not from some wildly passionate impulse of romantic but disproportioned selfassertion. A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than in action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.
也许“无用的”知识最重要的优点是能促动心灵沉思的习惯。现在世界上有许多人遇事过分轻率，不仅行动之前没有经过周密考虑，而且对有的行动从智谋上加以考虑也难以进行。在这个问题已，人们以各种奇异的方式表现出他们的偏见。靡菲斯特对年轻的学生说，理论是灰色的，生命之树是常青的。人们引证这句话时，都以为它似乎是歌德的格言，当作他认为魔鬼会对一个大学生说此话似的。哈姆雷特被看作“思而不行”的严肃告诫者，然而没有人认为奥赛罗是“行而不思”的告诫者。柏格森之类的教授对一般人持着势利眼，极力贬低哲学，说什么生命至少就像一队骑兵冲锋，就我看来，我认为当行动是出于对宇宙和人类命运的深刻了解，而不是出于野蛮的浪漫冲动而失衡的自我肯定时，它是最好的。在思想上而不是在行动上去寻求愉快的习惯，是对抗愚昧无知和过度权力欲的一种保护措施，是在不幸中保持镇定、在忧虑中保持平静的一种方法。禁闭于自我的生命可能迟早会变得痛苦不堪；只有透过宽广而较少的烦闷的亮窗，生命之中较为悲惨的部分才能变得坚韧。
A contemplative habit of mind has advantages ranging from the most trivial to the most profound. To begin with minor vexations, such as fleas, missing trains, or cantankerous business associates. Such troubles seem hardly worthy to be met by reflections on the excellence of heroism or the transitoriness of all human ills, and yet the irritation to which they give rise destroys many people’s good temper and enjoyment of life. On such occasions, there is much consolation to be found in out of the way bits of knowledge which have some real or fancied connection with the trouble of the moment; or even if they have none, they serve to obliterate the present from one’s thoughts. When assailed by people who are white with fury, it is pleasant to remember the chapter in Descartes’ Treatise on the Passions entitled ‘Why those who grow pale with rage are more to be feared than those who grow red.’ When one feels impatient over the difficulty of securing international co-operation, one’s impatience is diminished if one happens to think of the sainted King Louis IX, before embarking on his crusade, allying himself with the Old Man of the Mountain, who appears in the Arabian Nights as the dark source of half the wickedness in the world. When the rapacity of capitalists grows oppressive, one may be suddenly consoled by the recollection that Brutus, that exemplar of republican virtue, lent money to a city at 40 per cent, and hired a private army to besiege it when it failed to pay the interest.
心灵的沉思习惯具有遍及从最浅薄到最高深之处的优点。例如从挨跳蚤咬、火车误点或与贸易同行争吵等这些小苦恼开始。这样的烦事似乎很不值得做出英雄主义行为的反应，或者像对待人类暂时病害一样无可奈何，然而它们对人的影响却破坏了许多人的善良习性和生活乐趣。在这种情况下，人们可从一些奇特的知识中找到不少安慰，这类知识与这种现时的苦恼有着确实或空想的关系；即使没有这种安慰，也能从人们的思想中当下消除这种苦恼。当我们受到气得脸色发白的人攻击时，想想笛卡尔《论情感》中题为“为何那些气得脸发白的人比那些脸发红的人更为可怕”的一章，就会感到欣慰。当一个人对于寻求国际合作之困难感到不耐烦时，如果他正好想起已故的路易九世在参与十字军圣战前，与《天方夜谭》中作为世界半数邪恶的黑暗源泉“山岳老人”结成同盟时，这种情绪就会消失。当资本家的贪婪成为压制时，人们可能从对布鲁特斯的追忆里得到突然的安慰。这位共和主义美德的典范，以利率40％贷款给一个城邦，而当它无法付出利息时，他竟雇佣一支私人军队将该城包围。
Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant, but also makes pleasant things more pleasant. I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of the Han dynasty; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska introduced them into India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman Empire in the first century of our era; that the word‘apricot’ is derived from the same Latin source as the word‘precocious’, because the apricot ripens early; and that the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter.
奇妙的学习不仅能减少不愉快的事，而且，能使事情变得更愉快。我喜爱挑杏，是因为我知道它们早在汉朝时就首先在中国培育起来了，后经卡尼斯边王扣押的中国人质传入印度，不知何故又传入波斯，公元一世纪时到达罗马帝国；“杏”这个字与“早熟”一字同出于拉丁文，因为杏成熟较早，而字首A是由错误的语源学而误加上去的。所有这些都使得这种水果品尝起来益为甘美。
About a hundred years ago, a number of well-meaning philanthropists started societies ‘for the diffusion of useful knowledge’, with the result that people have ceased to appreciate the delicious savour of ‘useless’ knowledge. Opening Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy at haphazard on a day when I was threatened by that mood, I learnt that there is a ‘melancholy matter’, but that, while some think it may be engendered of all four humours, ‘Galen holds that it may be engendered of three alone, excluding phlegm or pituita, whose true assertion Valerius and Menardus stiffly maintain, and so doth Fuscius, Montaltus, Montanus. How (say they) can white become black?’ In spite of this unanswerable argument, Hercules de Saxonia and Cardan, Guianerius and Laurentius, are (so Burton tells us) of the opposite opinion. Soothed by these historical reflections, my melancholy, whether due to three humours or to four, was dissipated. As a cure for too much zeal, I can imagine a few measures more effective than a course of such ancient controversies.
约在100年前，一些好心的博爱之士创立社会团体，以“传播有用的知识”为目的，这样一来人们不再欣赏“无用的”知识之美味了。有一天我偶然翻开柏领的《忧郁症的解剖学》，当时我正受到那种情绪的威胁；我了解到有一种“忧郁的质料”，但有人认为它可能是由四种体液产生的，“盖伦认为它可能仅由三种体液（除去粘液之外）产生的，瓦勒利奥斯和米兰德坚决持此意见，佛席斯和蒙塔尔特斯也这样认为。他们说：’名的如何变成黑的呢？”尽管有这种无法回答的主张，但有如柏领告诉我们的，撒克逊的海克力斯·卡丹·圭安奴鲁斯和劳伦秀斯却持相反的意见。受到这种历史性回顾的安慰，无论是由四种或三种体液引起的，我的忧郁被驱散了。对于过度热情的治疗，我想指出比上述古代争论过程更为有效的一些方法。
But while the trivial pleasures of culture have their place as a relief from the trivial worries of practical life, the more important merits of contemplation are in relation to the greater evils of life, death and pain and cruelty, and the blind march of nations into unnecessary disaster. For those to whom dogmatic religion can no longer bring comfort, there is need of some substitute, if life is not to become dusty and harsh and filled with trivial self-assertion. The world at present is full of angry self-centred groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilisation rather than yield an inch. To this narrowness no amount of technical instruction will provide an antidote. The antidote, in so far as it is a matter of individual psychology, is to be found in history, biology, astronomy, and all those studies which, without destroying self-respect, enable the individual to see himself in his proper perspective. What is needed is not this or that specific piece of information, but such knowledge as inspires a conception of the ends of human life as a whole: art and history, acquaintance with the lives of heroic individuals, and some understanding of the strangely accidental and ephemeral position of man in the cosmos—all this touched with an emotion of pride in what is distinctively human, the power to see and to know, to feel magnanimously and to think with understanding. It is from large perceptions combined with impersonal emotion that wisdom most readily springs.
虽然文化上初浅的快乐足以解除实际生活中的一般苦恼，而沉思更为重要的功用则关乎生命的灾难、死亡、痛苦、残忍以及国家民族陷入不必要的悲惨状况。独断的宗教已不能再带来慰藉，为了使生活不趋于黑暗、枯燥，不致充满肤浅的自我肯定，必须寻求某种可以代替的东西。现今世界充斥着以自我为中心的愤怒群体，其中没有一个能具备全人类的整体眼光，每个群体都于可文明毁灭，而不愿作丝毫的让步。对于这种偏狭，任何专门教育都不能提供解救的办法。因为它属于个人心理上的问题，解毒良方应求之于历史学、生物学、天文学以及一切无碍自尊心、相反能让个人以合适的眼光看待自己的那些学科。需要的不是这样或那样的特殊的片断知识，而是足以激发整体人生目的概念之知识：艺术与历史，对英雄人物生活之了解，以及对人类在宇宙中极其偶然而短暂的地位的了解——所有这些都同人类特有的自做心情相联系，即经验与理解的能力。崇高的感情和透彻的思考力。从广阔的认知能力和无私的感情结合中最易产生出智慧来。
Life, at all times full of pain, is more painful in our time than in the two centuries that preceded it. The attempt to escape from pain drives men to triviality, to self-deception, to the invention of vast collective myths. But these momentary alleviations do but increase the sources of suffering in the long run. Both private and public misfortune can only be mastered by a process in which will and intelligence interact: the part of will is to refuse to shirk the evil or accept an unreal solution, while the part of intelligence is to understand it, to find a cure if it is curable, and, if not, to make it bearable by seeing it in its relations, accepting it as unavoidable, and remembering what lies outside it in other regions, other ages, and the abysses of interstellar space.
在所有时代，人生充满着苦痛，在我们今天较前两个世纪人生苦痛更甚。为了逃避痛楚，驱使人产走向卑琐，走向自欺，走向创造出大量超个体的神秘事情。然而，这些短暂的慰藉只不过是增加长期受苦的源泉。个人与公众的不幸只能靠意志与智力的交互作用来控制：在意志方面是拒绝回避不幸或接纳一项不切实际的解决方案，在智力方面是认识它，如果能补救则寻求补救的办法；如果不能补救则根据对它的关系的看法，将它视为不可避免的而接受它，并且记住那些存在于它之外的其他地区、其他时代和星空的深远之处，使得它变得可以忍受。