首页 有一种智慧叫包容(英文爱藏双语系列)

第27章 美德是另外事

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Knowledge and Virtue

?约翰·亨利·纽曼 / John Henry Newman

Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles. Liberal education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life—these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University; I am advocating, I shall illustrate and insist upon them; but still, I repeat, they are no guarantee for sanctity or even for conscientiousness, they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate, to the heartless, pleasant, alas, and attractive as he shows when decked, out in them. Taken by themselves, they do but seem to be what they are not; they look like virtue at a distance, but they are detected by close observers, and on the long run; and hence it is that they are popularly accused of pretense and hypocrisy, not, I repeat, from their own fault, but because their professors and their admirers persist in taking them for what they are not, and are officious in arrogating for them a praise to which they have no claim. Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk, then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.

知识是一回事,美德则是另外一回事。好意不是良心,优雅不是谦让,广博与公正的观点也不是信仰。无论多么富有启迪或高深莫测的哲学,都无法左右感情,都不具备有影响力的动机,都不具有导致生动活泼的原理。文科教育并非为了造就基督教徒或者天主教徒,而是为了造就绅士。造就一个绅士是件美好的事,有教养的才智,优雅的情趣,正直、公正而冷静的头脑,高贵而彬彬有礼的举止——这些是与渊博的学识与生俱来的品质,也正是大学教育的目的。我倡导它们,并加以阐释和坚持。不过我要说的是,它们仍然不能确保圣洁,甚或不能保证诚实。