無知常樂

羅伯特·林德（1879-1949），英國近代散文名家，生于愛爾蘭，曾任倫敦《新聞報》文學編輯，在散文創(chuàng)作方面有較高成就。

The average man who uses a telephone could not explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone， the railway train， the linotype， the airplane， as our grandfathers took for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither question nor understand them. It is as though each of us investigated and made his own a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is regarded by most men as a gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate. We revel in speculations about anything at all — about ; life after death or about such questions as that which is said to have puzzled Aristotle， \"Why sneezing from noon to midnight was good， but from night to noon unlucky?\" One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of the knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is， after all， the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma， which is the pleasure of answering， is already beginning to stiffen. One envies so inquisitive a man as Jewell， who sat down to the study of physiology in his sixties. Most of us have lost the sense of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our squirrel's hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.

一般用電話的人都不懂電話是怎樣工作的，他們總是把電話、鐵路、排字機、飛機等看成是自然而然的東西，就像我們的祖先覺得《福音書》里的奇事都是很自然的一樣。他們不懂，也不問。似乎我們每個人都只鉆研、弄懂很小范圍內(nèi)的一些事情。大多數(shù)人都認為日常生活之外的知識是花里胡哨的東西。然而，我們也在不停地抗拒著我們的無知。有時，我們會振奮起來，進行思考。我們會信手拈來一個問題，然后沉浸在思考中——如死后的生活，或者其他問題，比如一個據(jù)說曾經(jīng)困擾亞里士多德的問題：“為什么從中午到午夜打噴嚏是好運氣，而從午夜到中午打噴嚏代表壞運氣？”在尋找知識的過程中陷入無知，是人類的一大樂事。無知的快樂，說到底，是提問題的快樂。一個已經(jīng)不會提問的人，一個用教條的答案回答問題并以此為樂的人，他的頭腦已經(jīng)開始僵化了。我們很羨慕裘伊，他在60多歲的時候居然開始坐下來學習生理學，而大多數(shù)人在遠未達到這個年齡就已經(jīng)不知道什么是無知了。我們甚至會為我們的一點淺薄的知識而沾沾自喜，甚至覺得，流逝的時光本身就會自然地給我們所有的知識。我們忘了，蘇格拉底之所以流芳百世，不是因為他什么都懂，而是他發(fā)現(xiàn)在他70歲的時候，仍然什么都不懂。

◆編輯：譚添夏