古典教育

国外有一种奇怪的观点，认为每门学科的古籍都应该只有专业人士才能读, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. 因此，作为一名英国文学导师，我发现，如果普通学生想了解柏拉图主义, 他想做的最后一件事就是从图书馆书架上取下柏拉图的译本，读《会饮篇. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, 都是英国威廉希尔公司“主义”和影响的，而且在12页里只有一页告诉他柏拉图到底说了什么. 的 error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. 的 student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, 伟人, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. 的 simplest student will be able to understand, 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. 因此，作为一名教师，我的主要工作之一一直是说服年轻人，第一手知识不仅比二手知识更值得获得, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

这种对现代书籍的错误偏好和对旧书的羞怯在神学中最为猖獗. 无论你在哪里找到一个基督教俗人的小学习圈，你几乎可以肯定他们正在学习的不是圣. 路加或圣. 保罗还是圣?. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or [Richard] Hooker or [Joseph] Butler, but M. [Nikolai] Berdyaev or M. [Jacques] Maritain or M. [Reinhold] Niebuhr or Miss [Dorothy] Sayers or even myself.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. 当然，因为我自己是一个作家，我不希望普通读者不读现代书籍. 但如果他必须只读新书或旧书，我会建议他读旧书. 我之所以给他这样的建议，正是因为他是一个业余爱好者，因此比专家更不受当代独家饮食危险的保护. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, 所有隐藏的含义(通常作者自己都没有想到)都必须被揭露出来. 如果没有许多其他现代书籍的知识，往往不能完全理解它. 如果你在十一点参加一场八点开始的谈话，你往往看不出谈话内容的真正含义. 在你看来很平常的话会引起笑声或恼怒，而你不知道为什么, 当然, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. 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. 的 only safety is to have a standard of plain, 中心基督教(理查德·巴克斯特称之为“纯粹的基督教”)将当下的争议置于正确的角度. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. 这是一个很好的规则, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. 如果这对你来说太难了，你至少应该每读三本新书就读一本旧书.

Every age has its own outlook. 它特别善于看到某些真理，也特别容易犯某些错误. 因此，我们都需要能够纠正我们这个时代特有错误的书籍. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, 像我这样, who seem most opposed to it. 当我读到历代的争论时，没有什么比这样一个事实更让我震惊的了:双方通常都毫无疑问地假设了很多我们现在应该完全否认的东西. 的y thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, 但事实上，他们一直是通过一大堆共同的假设秘密地联合起来的——彼此联合起来，反对早先和后来的时代. 我们可以肯定，20世纪特有的盲目——后人会问的盲目, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it, 而希特勒和罗斯福总统或罗斯福总统之间在某些问题上是完全一致的. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. 如果它们是错误的，就会加重我们已经病得很严重的错误. 唯一的缓解办法是让几个世纪以来清新的海风吹过我们的头脑, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, 当然, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. 的y will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. 当然, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them