William Hazlitt, “On the Ignorance of the Learned”

For the more languages a man can speak,
一个人会说的语言越多，
His talent has but sprung the greater leak:
他的才智便漏得越厉害；
And, for the industry he has spent upon’t,
他在这上面花了多少功夫，
Must full as much some other way discount.
总要从别处等量扣除。
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac
希伯来语、迦勒底语和叙利亚语，
Do, like their letters, set men’s reason back,
正如它们的文字，使人的理性倒退，
And turn their wits that strive to understand it
那些竭力求解的人，
(Like those that write the characters) left-handed.
也会（像书写这些文字的人一样）变成左撇子。
Yet he that is but able to express
然而，一个人即使能用数种语言
No sense at all in several languages,
说出全无意义的话，
Will pass for learneder than he that’s known
也会被视为比那个只用母语
To speak the strongest reason in his own.
说出最有力道理的人更加博学。
— BUTLER

The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all others are mere authors and readers. It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarily seen with a book in his hand is (we may be almost sure) equally without the power or inclination to attend either to what passes around him or in his own mind. Such a one may be said to carry his understanding about with him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library shelves. He is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of striking out any observation that is not mechanically suggested to him by passing his eyes over certain legible characters; shrinks from the fatigue of thought, which, for want of practice, becomes insupportable to him; and sits down contented with an endless, wearisome succession of words and half-formed images, which fill the void of the mind, and continually efface one another. Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as “spectacles” to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others. Nature puts him out. The impressions of real objects, stripped of the disguises of words and voluminous roundabout descriptions, are blows that stagger him; their variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts him; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, and glare, and whirling motion of the world about him (which he has not an eye to follow in its fantastic changes, nor an understanding to reduce to fixed principles), to the quiet monotony of the dead languages¹, and the less startling and more intelligible combinations of the letters of the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly well. “Leave me to my repose,” is the motto of the sleeping and the dead. You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, to “take up his bed and walk,” as expect the learned reader to throw down his book and think for himself. He clings to it for his intellectual support; and his dread of being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men breathe common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of his own, and must live on those of other people. The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign sources “enfeebles all internal strength of thought,” as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom and authority, become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over lines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if they were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand! I would rather be a woodcutter, or the meanest hind, that all day “sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium, than wear out my life so,” twixt dreaming and awake. The learned author differs from the learned student in this, that the one transcribes what the other reads. The learned are mere literary drudges. If you set them upon original composition, their heads turn, they don’t know where they are. The indefatigable readers of books are like the everlasting copiers of pictures, who, when they attempt to do anything of their own, find they want an eye quick enough, a hand steady enough, and colours bright enough, to trace the living forms of nature.

在所有人中，思想最贫乏的，正是那些纯粹的作者和读者。与其除了读书写字之外什么都不会，还不如既不会读也不会写。一个平日总拿着书四处闲荡的人，我们几乎可以断定，他既没有能力，也没有意愿留意周围发生的事情或自己心中的活动。可以说，这样的人把理解力装在口袋里随身携带，或者干脆把它留在家中的书架上。他不敢踏上任何一条并非由眼前文字机械提示的推理道路，也不敢提出任何独立的观察；由于缺少练习，他畏惧思考的劳累，这种劳累已经变得令他无法忍受。于是，他满足于坐在那里，任由无穷无尽、令人厌倦的词语和半成形的意象依次经过脑中，填补心灵的空洞，又不断彼此抹去。在许多情况下，学问不过是常识的陪衬，是对真正知识的替代。人们很少把书本当作观察自然的“眼镜”，更多时候却把它当作百叶窗，为怯弱的眼睛和懒散的性情挡住自然强烈的光线与变幻不定的景象。书虫把自己裹进由语言概括织成的蛛网，只能看见事物经过他人心灵反射后投下的微弱影子。自然使他茫然失措。真实事物一旦剥去语言的伪装和卷帙浩繁、迂回曲折的描述，给他的印象便如同重击，使他踉跄不稳；事物的多样令他心神涣散，变化的迅速又令他精疲力竭。于是，他逃离周围世界的忙乱、喧嚣、耀眼光芒和旋转不息的运动——他既没有眼力追随其奇异的变化，也没有理解力将其归纳为固定的原则——转而躲进死语言那安静而单调的世界，沉浸于字母那些不那么惊人、也更容易理解的排列组合之中。这样倒好，简直再好不过。“别打扰我的安眠”，是沉睡者和死者的格言。要指望一个博学的读者扔下书本独立思考，就如同要求瘫痪者从椅子上一跃而起、扔掉拐杖，或者在没有奇迹的情况下“拿起褥子行走”一样荒唐。他紧紧抓住书本，把它当作智力上的支撑；他害怕被独自留下，犹如人们畏惧真空。他只能呼吸学问的空气，正如其他人呼吸普通空气。他的理智是借来的。他没有自己的观念，只能靠别人的观念活着。习惯于从外部来源获得观念，会“削弱思想内在的一切力量”，正如长期饮用烈酒会损害胃的机能。心智能力若得不到运用，或者受到习俗和权威的束缚，便会变得倦怠、麻木，不再适合思考或行动。一个人以博学的懒惰与无知度日，终日埋首于那些行句和音节，而它们激起的观念和兴趣，几乎不比一种陌生文字更多，直到双眼对着虚空合上，书本从无力的手中滑落——由此产生的萎靡和疲惫，又有什么值得惊讶的呢！我宁愿做一个樵夫，或者最卑微的雇农，整日“在太阳神的注视下挥汗，夜晚安睡于极乐世界”，也不愿在半梦半醒之间如此耗尽一生。博学的作者与博学的学生之间，区别只在于一个抄写另一个所阅读的东西。所谓博学之士，不过是文学苦工。让他们从事原创写作，他们便会头晕目眩，不知自己身在何处。那些不知疲倦的读书人，就像永远临摹画作的人；当他们试图创作自己的作品时，才发现自己既没有足够敏锐的眼睛，也没有足够稳定的手，更没有足够鲜明的色彩，无法描绘自然鲜活的形态。

Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape. It is an old remark, that boys who shine at school do not make the greatest figure when they grow up and come out into the world. The things, in fact, which a boy is set to learn at school, and on which his success depends, are things which do not require the exercise either of the highest or the most useful faculties of the mind. Memory (and that of the lowest kind) is the chief faculty called into play in conning over and repeating lessons by rote in grammar, in languages, in geography, arithmetic, etc., so that he who has the most of this technical memory, with the least turn for other things, which have a stronger and more natural claim upon his childish attention, will make the most forward schoolboy. The jargon containing the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting up an account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have no attraction to the tyro of ten years old, except as they are imposed as a task upon him by others, or from his feeling the want of sufficient relish or amusement in other things. A lad with a sickly constitution and no very active mind, who can just retain what is pointed out to him, and has neither sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself, will generally be at the head of his form. An idler at school, on the other hand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to laugh and cry in a breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow winding paths, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinioned to a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Mid-summer. There is indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents children from learning the usual lessons, or ever arriving at these puny academic honours. But what passes for stupidity is much oftener a want of interest, of a sufficient motive to fix the attention and force a reluctant application to the dry and unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best capacities are as much above this drudgery as the dullest are beneath it. Our men of the greatest genius have not been most distinguished for their acquirements at school or at the university.

任何一个完整经历过正规古典教育的各个阶段，而没有被它变成傻瓜的人，都可以认为自己侥幸逃过了一劫。有一种由来已久的说法：在学校里表现出色的男孩，长大进入社会后往往并不能成为最杰出的人物。事实上，学校要求男孩学习、并用来决定其成败的那些东西，既不需要运用最高级的心智能力，也不需要运用最有用的心智能力。在反复研读并机械背诵语法、语言、地理、算术等课程时，主要发挥作用的是记忆力，而且是最低级的记忆力。因此，一个孩子拥有的这种机械记忆越多，而对其他那些更自然、更强烈地吸引儿童注意力的事物越缺乏兴趣，他就越有可能成为学校里成绩最出色的学生。那些关于词类定义、算术运算法则或希腊语动词变格的术语，对于一个十岁的初学者不可能具有任何吸引力；除非别人把它们作为任务强加给他，或者他在其他事物中找不到足够的趣味和快乐。一个体质虚弱、心智也不甚活跃的男孩，只要能够记住所教给他的东西，即使既没有辨别事物的敏锐，也没有自行感受乐趣的生气，通常也会在班里名列前茅。相反，学校里的“懒学生”往往身体健康、精神旺盛，四肢活动自如，头脑清醒，能够感受到血液的流动和心脏的跳动，转瞬之间便能又笑又哭。比起趴在发霉的拼读课本上打瞌睡，跟着老师复述生硬难懂的双行诗，连续数小时被钉在写字桌前，最后在圣诞节或仲夏时用几枚微不足道的奖章补偿失去的时光与快乐，他宁愿追逐皮球或蝴蝶，让旷野的空气吹拂脸庞，眺望田野与天空，沿着蜿蜒的小路前行，或者热切地投入朋友和熟人之间种种细小的纷争与趣事。诚然，确实存在某种程度的愚钝，使儿童无法掌握通常的课程，也永远得不到这些微不足道的学业荣誉。然而，许多被当作愚钝的表现，其实只是缺乏兴趣，缺少足以集中注意力、迫使人勉强投入枯燥而无意义的学校功课的动机。最卓越的才能高于这种苦役，正如最迟钝的头脑低于它一样。我们那些最具天才的人物，通常并不以在学校或大学里的学业成就而著称。

Th’ enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever.
热烈的想象力，向来是个逃学者。

Gray and Collins² were among the instances of this wayward disposition. Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can they submit their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of intellect in which words take root, but into which things have not power to penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moral constitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant specimens of successful prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not be forgotten that the least respectable character among modern politicians was the cleverest boy at Eton³.

Gray 和 Collins 就是这种不受拘束的性情的例子。这类人并不十分看重这种教育的好处，也无法让自己的想象力如此卑顺地屈服于严格学院纪律的枷锁。有一种特定类型和程度的智力，词语能够在其中扎根，真实事物却无力穿透进去。平庸的才智，再加上某种品格禀赋上的单薄，正是孕育最出色的征文获奖者和希腊文短诗作者的土壤。不要忘记，现代政治家中最不值得尊敬的那个人，当年却是伊顿公学最聪明的学生。

Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about us, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the bosoms and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know. He is the most learned man who knows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actual observation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable to be brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed down through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most full of uncertainty, difficulties, and contradictions. It is seeing with the eyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pinning our faith on their understandings. The learned man prides himself in the knowledge of names and dates, not of men or things. He thinks and cares nothing about his next-door neighbours, but he is deeply read in the tribes and castes of the Hindoos and Calmuc Tartars. He can hardly find his way into the next street, though he is acquainted with the exact dimensions of Constantinople and Pekin. He does not know whether his oldest acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous lecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot tell whether an object is black or white, round or square, and yet he is a professed master of the laws of optics and the rules of perspective. He knows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does of colours. He cannot give a satisfactory answer to the plainest question, nor is he ever in the right in any one of his opinions upon any one matter of fact that really comes before him, and yet he gives himself out for an infallible judge on all these points, of which it is impossible that he or any other person living should know anything but by conjecture. He is expert in all the dead and in most of the living languages; but he can neither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person of this class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook to point out several solecisms in Milton’s Latin style; and in his own performance there is hardly a sentence of common English. Such was Dr. ——. Such is Dr. ——. Such was not Porson⁴. He was an exception that confirmed the general rule, a man that, by uniting talents and knowledge with learning, made the distinction between them more striking and palpable.

所谓学问，就是关于那些一般人并不知道、而我们只能通过书本或其他人为渠道间接获得的事物的知识。至于对眼前和周围事物的认识，对那些诉诸我们的经验、激情和追求，关系到人们内心与日常事务的事物的认识，则不算学问。学问，就是只有博学之人才知道的知识。一个人所知道的东西越远离普通生活和实际观察，实际用途越小，越不可能接受经验的检验，而且经过越多中间环节的传递，因而充满越多的不确定、困难和矛盾，他就越称得上博学。所谓学问，就是用别人的眼睛观看，用别人的耳朵倾听，把自己的信念寄托在别人的理解力上。博学之人以知道姓名和年代为傲，却不了解真实的人与事。他对隔壁邻居毫不关心、一无所知，却熟读印度人的部族和种姓，以及卡尔梅克鞑靼人的情况。他甚至很难找到去下一条街的路，却对君士坦丁堡和北京的确切规模了如指掌。他不知道自己相识最久的人究竟是恶棍还是傻瓜，却能够对历史上的所有主要人物发表一场气势恢宏的演讲。他甚至分辨不出一个物体是黑是白、是圆是方，却自称精通光学定律和透视法则。他对自己谈论的事物的了解，就像盲人对颜色的了解一样。他无法对最简单的问题给出令人满意的回答；面对任何真正摆在他眼前的事实问题，他的判断也从未正确。然而，对于那些他以及任何活着的人都不可能通过推测之外的方式加以认识的问题，他却把自己装扮成绝不会出错的权威。他精通各种古典语言和大多数现代语言，却既不能流利地说自己的母语，也不能正确地书写它。这一类人中曾有一位号称当时希腊文造诣第二的学者，着手指出 Milton 拉丁文风格中的若干语法错误；可是，在他自己的论述中，几乎找不到一句合乎日常英语习惯的话。从前的某某博士就是如此；如今的某某博士也是。Porson 却不是这样。他是一个反而使一般规则更加清楚的例外：正因为他兼具才智、真知与学问，才更鲜明地说明这三者本不是一回事。

A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of them. “Books do not teach the use of books.” How should he know anything of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant is conversant with books only as they are made of other books, and those again of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He can translate the same word into ten different languages, but he knows nothing of the thing which it means in any one of them. He stuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, with quotations quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his understanding, and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims and manners of the world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him “the mighty world of eye and ear” is hid⁵; and “knowledge,” except at one entrance, “quite shut out.”⁶ His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures, — “of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the corregioscity of Correggio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grand contour of Michelangelo” — of all those glories of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have in vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had never been, a mere dead letter, a by-word; and no wonder, for he neither sees nor understands their prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens’ Watering-place or Claude’s Enchanted Castle may be hanging on the walls of his room for months without his once perceiving them; and if you point them out to him he will turn away from them. The language of nature, or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does not understand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, because they are to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works as prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin Marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he “knows no touch of it,” from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd’s pipe upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with the sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a Latin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble he leaves to the critics. Does he understand “the act and practique part of life” better than “the theorique”? No. He knows no liberal or mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of skill or chance. Learning “has no skill in surgery,” in agriculture, in building, in working in wood or in iron; it cannot make any instrument of labour, or use it when made; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or the chisel or the hammer; it knows nothing of hunting or hawking, fishing or shooting, of horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or cudgel-playing, or bowls, or cards, or tennis, or anything else. The learned professor of all arts and sciences cannot reduce any one of them to practice, though he may contribute an account of them to an Encyclopedia. He has not the use of his hands nor of his feet; he can neither run, nor walk, nor swim; and he considers all those who actually understand and can exercise any of these arts of body or mind as vulgar and mechanical men, — though to know almost any one of them in perfection requires long time and practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn of mind particularly devoted to them. It does not require more than this to enable the learned candidate to arrive, by painful study, at a doctor’s degree and a fellowship, and to eat, drink, and sleep the rest of his life!

一个只懂书本的纯粹学究，必然连书本本身也不了解。“书本并不教人如何使用书本。”一个人若对作品所处理的对象一无所知，又怎么可能真正理解这部作品呢？博学的书呆子只熟悉书怎样由其他书构成，而那些书又由另一些书构成，如此循环，无穷无尽。他鹦鹉学舌地重复那些同样在鹦鹉学舌的人。他能够把同一个词翻译成十种不同的语言，却不知道这个词在其中任何一种语言里所指的事物究竟是什么。他满脑子塞的，是权威堆砌出来的权威，是引文转引出来的引文，感官、理解力和心灵却被封闭起来。他不熟悉世间的准则与人情世故，对个人的性格也茫然无知。他在自然或艺术的面貌中看不到任何美。对他而言，“耳目所及的广大世界”被遮蔽了；而知识除了一处入口之外，也被“完全挡在门外”。他的骄傲与无知结成同盟。他不了解其价值、因而蔑视为不值得关注的事物越多，他的自负便越是膨胀。他对绘画一无所知——不懂“Titian 的色彩、Raphael 的优雅、Domenichino 的纯净、Correggio 特有的风韵、Poussin 的学养、Guido 的气韵、Caracci 诸人的品位，或 Michelangelo 宏伟的轮廓”——也不懂意大利画派的种种荣光与佛兰德斯画派的种种奇迹；这些作品曾令全人类赏心悦目，成千上万的人也曾徒然耗尽一生去研究和模仿它们。对他来说，这些东西仿佛从未存在，只是一纸死文和空洞的名号。这也不足为奇，因为他既看不见，也不理解它们在自然中的原型。Rubens 的 Watering-place 或 Claude 的 Enchanted Castle，可能在他的房间墙上悬挂数月而从未被他留意；即使你指给他看，他也会转过脸去。自然的语言，或者艺术——作为另一种自然——的语言，是他无法理解的。他确实会反复念叨 Apelles 和 Phidias 的名字，因为这些名字出现在古典作家的作品中；他也会把他们的作品吹捧为奇迹，正是因为那些作品早已不复存在。可是，当希腊艺术最精美的遗存以 Elgin Marbles 的形式真实地摆在他面前时，他对它们唯一的兴趣，也不过在于它们能够引发一场学术争论，或者说——两者其实是一回事——一场围绕某个希腊语虚词含义的争吵。他对音乐同样一无所知；无论是全才 Mozart 的乐曲，还是山间牧人的笛声，他都对此一窍不通。他的双耳仿佛被钉在书本上，又被希腊语、拉丁语的声响以及学校教育打铁般的喧嚣震得麻木。他对诗歌是否懂得更多一些呢？他知道一行诗中有多少音步，一部戏剧中有多少幕；但对于诗歌的灵魂和精神，他却一无所知。他可以把一首希腊颂歌译成英语，也可以把一首拉丁警句改写成希腊诗；但这样的工作是否值得去做，他便留给批评家判断。那么，他对生活中“行动和实践的部分”，是否比对“理论的部分”理解得更好呢？并非如此。他既不懂自由技艺，也不懂机械技艺；不懂任何行业和职业，也不懂任何技巧性或机会性的游戏。学问“不懂外科手术”，也不懂农业、建筑、木工或铁工；它不能制造任何劳动工具，工具造好之后也不会使用；它不会操纵犁或铁锹，不会使用凿子或锤子；它不懂狩猎、放鹰、钓鱼或射击，不懂马匹或猎犬，不懂击剑、舞蹈、棍术、草地滚球、纸牌、网球，也不懂任何其他事情。那位精通一切艺术和科学的博学教授，虽然可以为百科全书撰写关于它们的条目，却不能把其中任何一门付诸实践。他不会运用自己的手脚，既不能跑，也不能走，更不能游泳；对于那些真正理解并能够从事某种身体或心智技艺的人，他一概视为粗俗的手艺人——尽管要把其中几乎任何一门掌握到炉火纯青的程度，都需要长期的时间和练习，还要有与生俱来的能力和特别适合它的心性。仅凭这些，博学的候选人便足以通过艰苦研习取得博士学位和学院研究员职位，然后在余生中吃饭、喝酒和睡觉了！

The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture. The common people have the use of their limbs; for they live by their labour or skill. They understand their own business and the characters of those they have to deal with; for it is necessary that they should. They have eloquence to express their passions, and wit at will to express their contempt and provoke laughter. Their natural use of speech is not hung up in monumental mockery, in an obsolete language; nor is their sense of what is ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express it, buried in collections of Anas. You will hear more good things on the outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; and more home truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending to a formal one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more of character, and be able, to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than the best blue-stocking⁷ of the age will be able to glean from that sort of learning which consists in an acquaintance with all the novels and satirical poems published in the same period. People in towns, indeed, are woefully deficient in a knowledge of character, which they see only in the bust, not as a whole-length. People in the country not only know all that has happened to a man, but trace his virtues or vices, as they do his features, in their descent through several generations, and solve some contradiction in his behaviour by a cross in the breed half a century ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either in town or country. Above all, the mass of society have common sense, which the learned in all ages want. The vulgar are the right when they judge for themselves; they are wrong when they trust to their blind guides. The celebrated nonconformist divine, Baxter, was almost stoned to death by the good women of Kidderminster, for asserting from the pulpit that “hell was paved with infants’ skulls”; but, by the force of argument, and of learned quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher at length prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, and over reason and humanity.

显而易见，人真正理解的东西，其实只限于一个极小的范围：他们的日常事务和经验，以及那些他们有机会认识、也有动机加以研究或实践的事物。其余不过是矫饰与欺骗。普通人能够使用自己的四肢，因为他们靠劳动或技艺谋生。他们了解自己的行当，也了解与自己打交道的人的性格，因为他们必须如此。他们有表达激情的口才，也随时有表达轻蔑、引人发笑的机智。他们自然运用语言的能力，并没有以一种过时的语言被悬挂起来，变成纪念碑式的嘲弄；他们对可笑事物的感觉，以及随手找到典故来表达这种感觉的本领，也没有埋没在各类轶事集之中。坐在从伦敦前往牛津的驿车车顶上，你听到的妙语，会比同那所著名大学的本科生或学院院长共同生活整整一年还多；在小酒馆里听一场吵闹的辩论，你学到的直截了当的真话，也会比旁听下议院的一场正式辩论更多。一位上了年纪的乡间妇人，往往比当代最博学的才女更懂得人的性格；她还能从过去五十年里一座乡镇中人们说过、做过和议论过的事情里，信手拈出更有趣的轶事加以说明，而后者所拥有的学问，不过是熟悉同一时期出版的全部小说和讽刺诗。城市居民确实极其缺乏对人的了解；他们看到的只是半身像，而不是全身像。乡间的人不仅知道某个人身上发生过的一切，还像追溯他的面貌一样，把他的美德或恶习沿着数代人的血统向上追溯，并用半个世纪前血统中的一次混杂，解释他行为中的某种矛盾。无论在城市还是乡村，博学之士对此都一无所知。最重要的是，社会大众拥有常识，而古往今来的博学者恰恰缺少这种东西。普通人凭自己的判断行事时往往是对的；听信那些盲目的向导时才会出错。著名的非国教派神学家 Baxter 曾在讲坛上宣称“地狱是用婴儿的头骨铺成的”，几乎被基德明斯特那些善良的妇女用石头砸死；然而，凭借论证的力量以及从教父著作中搬来的博学引文，这位可敬的传教士最终战胜了会众的疑虑，也战胜了理性和人道。

Such is the use which has been made of human learning. The labourers in this vineyard⁸ seem as if it was their object to confound all common sense, and the distinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional maxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust, and increasing in absurdity with increase of age. They pile hypothesis on hypothesis, mountain high, till it is impossible to come at the plain truth on any question. They see things, not as they are, but as they find them in books, and “wink and shut their apprehensions up,” in order that they may discover nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince them of their absurdity. It might be supposed that the height of human wisdom consisted in maintaining contradictions and rendering nonsense sacred. There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these persons have not set their seals, and tried to impose on the understandings of their followers as the will of Heaven, clothed with all the terrors and sanctions of religion. How little has the human understanding been directed to find out the true and useful! How much ingenuity has been thrown away in the defence of creeds and systems!

人类的学问就是被这样使用的。这座葡萄园里的劳作者，仿佛把扰乱一切常识、混淆善恶之别作为自己的目标；他们凭借的是代代相传的格言，以及未经检验便被接受的先入之见，而这些观念年代越久，荒谬也越甚。他们把假说层层堆叠，高如山岳，直到任何问题上最朴素的真相都再也无法触及。他们不是按照事物本来的样子看待事物，而是按照书中写下的样子去看；他们“闭目塞听，锁住自己的理解力”，以免发现任何会妨碍其偏见、或使其认识到自身荒谬的东西。人们几乎会以为，人类智慧的最高境界就在于维持自相矛盾，使无稽之谈变得神圣。无论一条教条多么凶残或愚蠢，这些人都曾在上面盖下自己的印记，并企图把它作为上天的旨意强加给追随者的理解力，再为它披上宗教的一切恐惧与制裁。人类的理解力被用于发现真实而有用的事物，是何等之少！又有多少聪明才智被白白浪费在为信条和体系辩护上！

How much time and talents have been wasted in theological controversy, in law, in politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in finding out the art of making gold! What actual benefit do we reap from the writings of a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Waterland, or Prideaux’ Connections, or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St. Augustine, or Puffendorf, or Vattel, or from the more literal but equally learned and unprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius? How many grains of sense are there in the thousand folio or quarto volumes? What would the world lose if they were committed to the flames to-morrow? Or are they not already “gone to the vault of all the Capulets”⁹? Yet all these were oracles in their time, and would have scoffed at you or me, at common sense and human nature, for differing with them. It is our turn to laugh now.

有多少时间和才智被浪费在神学争论、法律、政治、字句批评、占星断案以及寻找炼金术上！我们究竟从 Laud、Whitgift、Bishop Bull、Bishop Waterland 的著作，从 Prideaux 的 Connections，从 Beausobre、Calmet、St. Augustine、Puffendorf 或 Vattel 的著作中，或者从 Scaliger、Cardan 和 Scioppius 那些更加拘泥字面、同样博学而无益的工作中，得到了什么实际好处？那上千部对开本或四开本著作中，究竟含有几粒常识？假如明天就把它们投入火中，世界会失去什么？或者，它们难道不是早已“进入 Capulet 全家的墓穴”了吗？然而，这些人在自己的时代都曾被奉为神谕；只因你我、常识和人性与他们相左，他们便会加以嘲笑。现在轮到我们发笑了。

To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be. Women have often more of what is called good sense than men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason wrong; for they do not reason at all. They do not think or speak by rule; and they have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense, on that account. By their wit, sense, and eloquence together, they generally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, when they write to their friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that of most authors — uneducated people have most exuberance of invention and the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespeare’s was evidently an un-educated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in the variety of his views; as Milton’s was scholastic, in the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shakespeare had not been accustomed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.

最后，就此收束。社会中最明智的人，是那些从事实务、深谙世故的人；他们根据亲眼所见和亲身所知作出判断，而不是围绕事物应当如何，编织蛛网般细密的区分。女性往往比男性拥有更多所谓的健全常识。她们较少自命不凡，也较少陷入理论之中；她们更多地依据事物在心灵中造成的直接而不由自主的印象进行判断，因此也判断得更加真实、自然。她们不会错误地推理，因为她们根本不推理。她们不依照规则思考或说话；也正因如此，她们通常不仅更有常识，也更有口才和机智。凭借机智、常识和口才，她们通常总能设法支配自己的丈夫。她们写给朋友的私人书信——而不是写给书商出版的作品——文体胜过大多数作家。未受教育的人往往拥有最丰沛的创造力，也最少受到偏见束缚。无论从想象力的新鲜，还是从眼界的丰富来看，Shakespeare 显然有一颗未经学院教育塑造的心灵；相比之下，Milton 的思想与情感在质地上则是学院式的。Shakespeare 并不习惯在学校里写赞美美德或抨击恶习的命题作文。正因如此，他的戏剧才具有一种自然不饰而又健康有力的道德基调。要认识人类天才的力量，我们应当阅读 Shakespeare；要看清人类学问的渺小，我们不妨研究他的注释家。