評論
打印
and you go home feeling that you have had "a glimpse of that perfection in which spirit and form dwell in immortal harmony; truth and beauty bearing a new growth on the ancient stem of time."
你會帶著這樣一種心情回家——你已經“窺見到不朽的靈魂以一種和諧的方式常駐人間，而真善美則是同上古精神一脈相承的不二準則”。
This year is the happiest because I am studying subjects that especially interest me, economics, Elizabethan literature, Shakespeare under Professor George L. Kittredge, and the History of Philosophy under Professor Josiah Royce. Through philosophy one enters with sympathy of comprehension into the traditions of remote ages and other modes of thought, which erewhile seemed alien and without reason.
這真是令人愉快的一年，因為我所學的科目特別合我的胃口，比如經濟學，伊麗莎白時期文學，還有喬治·L.吉特萊芝教授主講的莎士比亞，約西亞·羅伊斯教授主講的哲學史。一旦步入哲學的殿堂，你就會領略到久遠年代的種種傳統及其思想模式的精妙，而在不久前，這些知識在世人眼中還是陌生而不知所云的。
But college is not the universal Athens I thought it was. There one does not meet the great and the wise face to face; one does not even feel their living touch. They are there, it is true; but they seem mummified. We must extract them from the crannied wall of learning and dissect and analyze them before we can be sure that we have a Milton or an Isaiah, and not merely a clever imitation. Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. It is possible to know a flower, root and stem and all, and all the processes of growth, and yet to have no appreciation of the flower fresh bathed in heaven's dew.
不過，大學并不是萬能的“雅典學園”。你不會在這里遇到偉大的靈魂，也不會與智慧面面相對，你甚至感覺不到他們手指的觸摸。雖然他們是確實存在的，但是他們似乎已經變成了干枯的木乃伊。在我們確信已經擁有了彌爾頓或者以賽亞之前，我們必須要將他們從知識的縫隙中抽取出來，并對其進行細致入微的分析，而不僅僅是自作聰明的模仿。在我看來，很多學者都忘記了這樣一個事實，我們因偉大文學作品而產生的共鳴，更多地是依賴于我們深切的同情心，而非我們的理解力。問題是留存在人們記憶中的文化精髓極其稀少。不妨說，精髓的傳承猶如枝條上垂下的成熟果實——你能夠尋覓到一朵花、一條根莖和一束枝條的生長軌跡，但是你卻不會對滋潤鮮花的天堂雨露心存感激。
