[翻译]谋杀机器(四)：反对现代主义

All the speculators one saw a few years ago as to the probable effect of home rule on education in Ireland showed one how inadequately the problem was grasped. To some the expected advent of Home Rule seemed to promise as its main fruition in the field of education the raising of their salaries. To others the supreme thing it was to bring it its train was the abolition of Dr Starkie. To some again it held out the delightful prospect of Orange boys and Orange girls being forced to learn Irish. to others it meant the dawn of an era of commonsense, the ushering in of the reign of ‘a sound modern education' suitable to the needs of a progressive modern people.

几年前，所有投机者对地方自治对爱尔兰教育的可能的影响的看法都表明，他们对对这个问题的掌握是多么不充分。对一些人而言，地方自治在教育领域的主要预期成果似乎是提高他们的工资。对其他人而言，最重要的罢免了斯塔基博士。对于某些人，地方自治再次展现了新教徒孩子被迫学习爱尔兰语的令人愉快的前景。对于其他人，地方自治意味着一个常识时代的黎明，意味着符合进步的现代人的需求的”健全的现代教育“的统治的到来

I scandalised many people at the time by saying that the last was the view that irritated me most. The first view was not so selfish as it might appear, for between the salary offered to teachers and the excellence of a country's education system there is a vital connection. And the second and third forecasts at any rate opened up picturesque vistas. The passing of Dr Starkie would have something of the pageantry of the banishment of Napoleon to St Helena [an effect which would have been heightened had he been accompanied into exile by Mr Bonaparte Wyse], and the prospect of the children of Sandy Row being taught to curse the Pope in Irish was rich and soul-satisfying. These things we might or might not have seen had Home Rule come. But I expressed the hope that even Home Rule would not commit Ireland to an ideal so low as the ideal underlying the phrase ‘a sound modern education.'

当时我批评了最后一个观点，这让很多人感到震惊。 第一种观点并不像看起来那么自私，因为教师的薪水与国家教育体系的质量间存在重要的联系。无论如何，第二和第三个预测展示了如画班美好的前景。 Starkie博士的逝世会产生某种盛况，就像拿破仑被放逐到圣赫勒拿岛(如果Bonaparte Wyse先生陪同他流放，影响会更加显著)，以及 Sandy Row 的孩子们被教育用爱尔兰语诅咒教皇的前景既丰富又令人心满意足。 如果地方自治真的来临，我们可能也可能不会看到这些。 但我希望，即使地方自治也不要让爱尔兰陷入一个差到像“健全的现代教育”这个短语所蕴含的理想。

It is a vile phrase, one of the vilest I know. Yet we find it in nearly every school prospectus. and it comes pat to the lips of nearly everyone that writes or talks about schools.

 这是我所知道的最卑鄙的短语之一。 然而，我们几乎在每一所学校的招股说明书中都能找到它。 几乎每个书写或谈论学校的人都会说到这一点。

Now. there can be no such thing as ‘a sound modern education.' - as well talk about a ‘lively modern faith' or ‘a serviceable modern religion.' It should be obvious that the more ‘modern' an education is the less sound; for in education ‘modernism' is as much a heresy as in religion. In both medievalism were a truer standard. We are too fond of clapping ourselves upon the back because we live in modern times, and we preen ourselves quite ridiculously [and unnecessarily] on our modern progress. There is, of course, such a thing as modern progress, but it has been won at how great a cost. How many precious things have we flung from us to lighten ourselves for that race.

现在不可能存在所谓“完善的现代教育”，以及谈论“活泼的现代信仰”或“有用的现代宗教”。显然，越“现代”的教育越不健全；因为在教育中，“现代主义”与在宗教中一样是异端。在这两方面中世纪主义都是一个更真实的标准。 我们过誉我们生活的现代，我们可笑(且不必要)地夸耀我们的现代进步。现代确实有进步，但它为获得它所付出的代价相当高昂。 为了在竞争中获胜，我们放弃了多少宝贵的东西以减轻自己的负担。

And in some diiections we have progressed not at all. or we have progressed in a circle. Perhaps, indeed, all progress on this planet, and on every planet, is in a circle, just as every line you draw on a globe is a circle or part of one. Modern speculation is often a mere groping where ancient men saw clearly. All the problems with which we strive [I mean all the really important problems] were long ago solved by our ancestors, only their solutions have been forgotten. There have been States in which the rich did not grind the poor, although there are no such States now; there have been been self-governing democracies, although there are few such democracies now; there have been rich and beautiful social organisations. with an art and a culture and a religion in every man's house, though for such a thing today we have to search out some sequestered people living by a desolate sea shore or in a high forgotten valley among lonely hills - a hamlet of Iar-Connacht or a village in the Austrian Alps. Mankind, I repeat, or some section of mankind, has solved all its main problems somewhere and at some times. I suppose no universal and permanent solution is possible as long as the old Adam remains in us, the Adam that makes each one of us, and each tribe of us, something of the rebel, of the the thinker, of the adventurer, of the egoist, but the solutions are there, and it is because we fail in clearness of vision or in boldness of heart or in singleness of purpose that we cannot find them.

在某些方向上，我们根本没有进步，或者一直在轮回。 也许，我们的所有进步，以及世界上的所有进步，都是在一个圆圈中。就像你画的每条线都是一个圆圈的一部分。 现代的思辨往往只是摸索，而古人早已看清。我们努力解决的所有问题(我的意思是所有真正重要的问题)很久以前就已被我们的祖先所解决，只是他们的解决方案被遗忘了。曾经有过富人不折磨穷人的国家，尽管现在已不复存在；曾经有自治的民主国家，尽管如今寥寥无几；曾经出现过丰富多彩的社会组织：每个人的家里都有独特的艺术、文化和宗教，尽管今天为了这些，我们必须寻找一些生活在荒凉的海边或在孤独的山丘之间被遗忘的高谷中的与世隔绝的人——例如西康诺特或奥地利阿尔卑斯山的村庄。 人类，或者至少一部分部分，已经在某个时间某个地方解决了所有的主要问题。 我想，只要旧亚当仍然存在于我们之中，就不可能有普遍和永久的解决方案，亚当使我们每个人和我们的每个部落都成为反叛者、思想家、冒险家、冒险家、利己主义者。但解决方案就在那里，正是因为我们在清晰的视野、勇敢的心或单一的目标上失败了，所以我们找不到它们。